Better the Daemon You Know Part 2
by Extartius
Summary: The frontier world of Gunga IV has been invaded by the Tyranid scourge. Only the hastily mustered forces of the Imperium stand between the xenos and complete anihilation of the planet's resources. Follow the Orrax into the fray once more.
1. The Great Devourer

_This is a teaser for my next major project. The Orrax Regiments are about to clash horns with the Tyranids._

_Enjoy!

* * *

**A Kind of Homecoming**_

Bellicus Company rolled into Gourangi at 0800 hours. Wolfe jumped down from the back of the Salamander command APC to waltz in ahead of the column. He could see from the moment he entered that this was no place to stage a last ditch defence.

'Get everyone out of the tanks,' he bellowed, sending his adjutant scrambling to get the men deployed.

The Waystation of Gourangi was in turmoil. The settlers were trying to pack as much of their personal possessions into what transport they had. Eight-wheeler flat-bed's were piled high with junk. Furniture and cogitator units, surveying equipment and all the paraphernalia of their daily lives. These were the thing that were most precious to them. So precious that they obviously intended on walking out of Gourangi to the evacuation point.

Deacon jogged up from the rear to join him.

'What's the plan, Captain?'

'You seen this?' Wolfe gestured in disdain at what he was seeing. Children cried on the side of the main thoroughfare as their parents panicked over getting the Salicar rug loaded onto the back of a survey crawler. 'Frakkin' nuits, the lot of them.'

Deacon nodded his agreement.

'Come with me.'

They approached a man who looked to be in authority. He was coordinating a group of rangy forest-men in loading up the survey equipment they carried out of the central lab-dome.

'Are you in charge around here?' Wolfe bellowed. The man turned and his face lit up with joy as he finally noticed the arrival of the troops.

'I am, are you here to...' he didn't get to finish his sentence before Wolfe laid him out with a roundhouse punch.

'Not any more, you're not. Deacon, round up your platoon and get these vehicles unloaded. They'll make much better time if they're carrying people instead of all this crap.'

'You're assigning me guard duty?'

'No, you'll stay here to get them shipped out but then I want you nto hold out here until I get back.'

'What are you going to do?'

Wolfe favoured him with the toothy grin that likened him to his namesake.

'Well, staying here would be the quickest way to get us all killed. They'll roll right over us and barely even slow down. I intend to go out to meet them. We'll make them think there's more of us than there are by spreading out, hitting them as they roll up and bolting back here for a last stand. That should buy more time for these fools to get to the evac point and for our reinforcements to get organised.'

'But I can help, you need men with jungle-smarts out there...'

'Sure, Gabes will lead second platoon, Starkey'll take third and Harko with fifth. They'll make sure the fall-back is as tight as possible but I need someone with jungle-smarts back here too, to make sure we don't get blasted when we crash through those thickets.'

'I've got your back, Wolfe.'

The two men clasped hands. Deacon got the sense that it may be for the last time.

'Gabes, Starkey, Harko, saddle up and get you men moving!' Wolfe bellowed, catching the lascarbine tossed to him by his adjutant.

He shot Deacon one last wry glance as he jogged out into the jungle with the rest of Bellicus at his heels.

xxx

Three hours later Deacon squatted at the edge of the makeshift little settlement, staring out into the jungle as though his Catachan-bred eyes could pierce the green depths.

The settlers were well on their way back, by now. Deacon had sent six good men to guard them. The jungle would likely be crawling with the enemy all around, by now. Invisible stalkers such as Deacon had faced before and barely lived to tell of.

The men were edgy. They started to murmur as the sound of lasguns rose in the distance, accompanied by the muffled shouts of soldiers and the screams of wounded men that for all their potency never lasted for more than a couple of seconds.

The sounds came steadily closer.

'Hold your nerve, boys,' Deacon murmured. 'They'll be here soon enough.'

The cacophony of war came closer and rose in volume. But as it came nearer even the din of men and their technological weapons of war couldn't drown out the rustling undertone that reached their ears. Like the wind in the trees it hushed and shushed, resonating louder, now softer, now louder again like breakers on a sandy beach.

Deacon knew that sound.

White-armoured men broke from the treeline, caked with mud and tree-sap and many of them bloodied too. Starkey led his men in, a look of grim determination on his face contrasting starkly with the numb terror on the faces of his men, precious few of whom had survived.

'Where's Wolfe,' Deacon cried.

'He was right behind me. God-Emperor, Deacon they rolled right through fifth platoon. Harko's dead and I don't know where Gabes is...'

The answer came seconds later as Gabes plunged out of the jungle with two men on his heels. One of them screamed as he disappeared back into the green, swallowed with nothing to tell them what had take him but a green haze and the tell-tale signs of something moving through the underbrush.

'Stalkers!' Gabes screamed.

'Covering fire,' Deacon replied and the two survivors dove to the ground as lasfire sheeted out into the jungle. After seven seconds of free-for-all Deacon called a cease-fire and ran out to bring Gabes and his cohort into cover behind the pathetically thin metal sheeting that surrounded the settlement.

'They're coming... they're coming...' gasped Deacon's fellow Catachan, his eyes rolling back in his head as battle-shock set in. Deacon punched him in the face to bring him round.

'We don't have time for this, Gabes, pull yourself together!'

The hissing of the forest was gaining volume more steadily now, enervating the men so that they could hardly sit still. The waiting was shredding their nerves. Deacon wished for the cold, bloody comfort of having something to shoot at, even if it was only so he could get his guts ripped out and strewn about the glade. Anything was better than this.

Wolfe emerged from the jungle, walking backwards, his lascarbine firing on full auto into the brush. He ejected a spent clip and slammed another home, baying with maniacal rage the whole time and ignoring Deacon's shouts to get into cover.

As the last clip drained out he turned and they saw his exultant expression limned in the fading daylight, Demoniac and utterly blasted clean of any sanity he might once have owned.

And then the tide of xenos flesh rolled over him, turning the tree-line into a writing mass of chitinous anathema. Claws and teeth flashed white in the dusk-light, horned carapaces gleamed purple and blue and a hundred hues in between. Writhing limbs and tentacles tore up the undergrowth and the earth beneath it in a tide of senseless consumption.

The Tyranids had come to Gunga IV and Bellicus Company was the first Imperial unit to clash heads with them.

Bellicus Company was damned!


	2. Encounters

**566.M41, Necromunda**

The Priory of Santa Luciana was an ancient edifice located near the central spine of Hive Primus. It had long ago occupied a place of honour in the city's hierarchy, but in the millennia since its construction, as the Hive had grown upward, straining for the sunlit expanses of the higher atmosphere, the Priory had been relegated to a state of mediocrity. This state was only expounded by the ruling class' slip into secular pursuits. These days the Priory was little more than an orphanage, filled to capacity with waifs and strays. The primary focus of the sisters cloistered there had become the desire to give those waifs the Emperor's guiding light in their lives.

As well as food and shelter, the children were given education, from the basics of reading, writing and arithmetic, to the dizzying heights of philosophy and religious studies. Those that did not excel in such cerebral pursuits, or who showed a potential for more physical pursuits, were trained in the ways of combat by the Priory's small cadre of Frateris Militia. Many of the Priory's students went on to become prominent members of the middle-echelons of society, employed by merit of the skills imparted to them by the sisters. Others would join the ranks of the Frateri. One and all, the children that found a place to sleep within those walls were the lucky ones. But Sister Clarine knew that many of them were completely unaware of this fact. It pained her.

There were other advantages to finding shelter with the sisters of Santa Luciana, an advantage that few of them would ever fully appreciate. Today was one of those rare days.

The gates rattled open to admit the be-robed company as it alighted from the angular transport parked before the gates. Clarine had been assigned the task of welcoming the guests. It was a rare honour and one that she relished. For a Daughter of the Emperor to stand in the presence of those that carried the Emperor's own gene-seed was a heady, almost holy experience. Especially when one of them was Brother Perseus.

He was the most devout man Clarine had ever met, though whether he was indeed a man was hotly debated in some circles of the Ecclesiarchy. But at least _he_ was devout without the maniacal fanaticism that was so endemic in that organisation. A quiet beacon of faith, a stolid pillar of belief, a living avatar of the Emperor's divine glory.

'Sister Clarine,' he greeted her, his rich, deep tones reverberating throughout the narrow atrium just inside the gates. 'The Emperor's light shines from your eyes, daughter.' He threw back his cowl and tossed the shrouding cloak back over his shoulders, revealing his ornate, black power armour studded in silver and resplendent with devotional scroll-work. He doffed his skull-masked helm to reveal a craggy but meticulously clean-shaven visage, complete with the macabre adamantium construct that had replaced the left hemisphere of his head. His single organic eye was like a flawless pearl, couched in a weathered boulder. The other glowed ominously red.

It was only as he came to a halt before her that the sheer mass of the man made itself felt. Eight feet tall and broad as a rhox bull. Built as all Astartes are built, a fortress made flesh.

'Brother Perseus, be welcome within our walls. We are honoured to receive you,' she bowed.

'Stand, sister, you shall not make obeisance to me. I am but a humble servant of the Emperor's will, just as you are yourself. Please, allow me to introduce someone.' He held out a massive hand and she laid her own within it, completely trusting him not to crush her bones to jelly. He turned to face another of the shrouded men.

'This is my battle brother, Ascertes Greathammer.'

He was taller than Perseus, if that was possible, and deeper in the chest. Again he was completely clean-shaven, though his features were not so weathered as Perseus'. Over his power armour he wore a white tabard with no markings or insignia, though his cloak was clasped with a black shield adorned with a golden skull. A gold reliquiem was suspended from a chain attached to his broad belt. This could only mean one thing, Clarine knew, for she was well versed in the conventions of the Extartes Chapter.

'My Lord, you do us a great honour by coming here,'

'You were right, Perseus, my old friend, she is perceptive.' This man was the Chapter's Grand Master, he bore the Reclusiam, in which the Chapter's most prized relic was encased.

'But surely this means that Master Antarius has fallen? How did this come to be?' asked Clarine.

'Brother Antarius fell in battle, fighting the enemies of the Imperium. He had served the Emperor for two hundred and sixty three years and was Master for one hundred and five of those.'

Clarine smiled inwardly even as she mourned the death of a stalwart servant of the Emperor. This was Perseus' way of stating that the old master had had a good innings. Being a Chaplain he knew how to phrase things in the most eloquent way.

'Emperor keep him,' she murmured. The marines muttered blessings of their own, though she could not quite make out the exact litany. They were strange, these Astartes, but they were loyal and pure of purpose.

'Come,' she said, 'You must take refreshment before the inspections.' She led them inside, nodding a fond greeting to Brother Ferrion the Chapter's chief-apothecary, whom she knew almost as well as Perseus.

xxx

Felix was a swine. He was always beating up on the scrawny kids and that included Corgan. But Felix didn't have a clue he was about to learn a valuable lesson about exercising better judgement. Corgan might look scrawny, he might be the quiet kid that preferred his own company and so sat in the corner and had few friends. He might even have let Felix push him around once or twice in the past. But Corgan wasn't the easy target Felix thought he was. He'd been taking lessons from old Freydo.

The bully was walking into a situation Corgan had engineered using his greater ingenuity and understanding of the male psychology. He'd paid attention in class, while Felix was throwing paper Thunderhawks and drawing filthy doodles featuring sisters in compromising situations.

The recreation hall was a-bustle during the afternoon recess. The kitchen drones served wholesome drinks and snacks while the children amused themselves in any number of constructive activities, many of which Corgan knew had been introduced because they had educational properties. The sisters were not stupid and took every opportunity afforded them to drum things home. They were more subtle than anyone gave them credit for. Except Corgan. With his sly intelligence he had long ago seen through the devices they provided for light entertainment. They couldn't fool him.

Despite the availability of such useful pursuits, Felix was up to his usual business of scaring the life out of anyone smaller and less belligerent than him. Corgan watched him out of the corner of his eye, pretending to watch a game of Cardinal Regicide being played out in a particularly predictable fashion on a table in front of him. He was deliberately ignoring Felix because he knew that this would not be tolerated. Sooner rather than later, the bully would insinuate himself upon Corgan's solitary existence in his typically heavy-handed way.

It was a familiar format, although Corgan himself had only been subjected to it once or twice before. Today would be different. Today Corgan didn't intend to be the one getting kicked in the midriff.

'You're in my way, scab!'

'So find a way around,' said Corgan, without turning to face the bully.

'What if I don't wanna go round? What if I wanna go through instead?'

'Then you're welcome to try, frak-face!'

Felix's wide-armed swing was so slow that Corgan was easily able to side-step out of the way. Whenever he got into situations like these, when his blood rose and his adrenaline started pumping, it always seemed as if everyone around him was moving through water compared to him. He didn't know why that was and couldn't explain it, he was simply faster than they were, both in body and mind.

Felix's lumbering swipe at him put the bully off-balance, he'd put too much weight and anger behind the lunge. Corgan could so easily have placed a telling blow and put him on the ground but the time wasn't right, yet. He was just getting started.

He leapt up onto the Regicide table, scattering the playing pieces and turning to look down at Felix, schooling his features to calm.

'Bit slow, Felix, I always thought you bore a striking resemblance to a sump-slug, I guess it's genetic…'

With an inarticulate roar Felix dove at Corgan, jarring the table that had, until a fraction of a second earlier, given Corgan a considerable height advantage. The players scattered along with several dozen kids that had thought better of standing quite so nearby. Corgan landed lightly on the floor behind Felix, having hopped over him and spun through a hundred and eighty degrees as Felix charged. He turned in time to see the table splinter under the bully's considerable bulk.

'You want me to get sister Gregina to kiss that better for you, Felix, looks like a nasty little scratch,' he quipped as blood began to seep from several shallow cuts beneath Felix's now dishevelled cassock.

'I'm gonna squeeze you like a ripe ploin, you little scab…' he growled, his face twisted with rage, pain and perhaps even a little fear. Felix had never been bested in his life and now this little squirt was making a fool of him.

'That's a fine theory, Felix, but does it have any practical application?' Corgan replied, dodging aside from another clumsy lunge.

'Let's just wait and see, shall we?' Felix panted, now decidedly red in the face. Corgan just smiled wanly and kept dodging away, never moving further than a few feet from the spot where he had been standing originally. No one could have called it running, though Corgan was well aware that he could only keep at this for so long before his audience grew bored and started to consider him cowardly instead of insanely courageous.

The moment arrived with alacrity. Felix tore a leg from the crushed table and slapped his palm with it.

'Let's see how you dodge this, shall we?'

Corgan smiled again, all the time scanning Felix's posture to judge his next move. When it came Corgan was mildly disappointed in how easy it was to duck under the stave, spin on one heel in time with Felix's momentum and deliver a well-timed body-blow to the boy's right kidney with his left fist. The weight of Felix's lunge carried him forward and Corgan's perfect pirouette put him in a better position to land a second blow with his right. The first punch hadn't even registered yet.

Felix exhaled forcefully as all the air was crushed from his lungs and he fell flat on his face. Winded, he started to go purple as he panicked, gulping for breath. There was no need to press home the advantage, two punches had been enough to teach Felix a valuable lesson. He might piss blood for a day or two, but he'd get his breath back in a moment and be the better for it.

But Corgan couldn't resist spitting on the bully as he lay prone. It was more for the benefit of his audience than anything else. He wasn't the wordy type.

Like a fleet of black ships parting the waves several gigantic, power armoured forms pushed through the press of bodies. Even the imperturbable Corgan was intimidated.

'You fought well, little brother, and wisely. Tell me, who taught you to move like that?' asked the first beetle-black behemoth in deep, resonating tones.

'No one, sir. Freydo says it's a natural instinct.' Corgan replied, fighting the irrational fear that had come over him as that great shadow fell across him.

'Such battle-instincts in one so young I have never seen,' said the big man. He turned to survey the awe-silent crowd around him.

'Did not the Emperor fight to protect himself when his enemies were all around him?' he intoned. 'He did not quake to see the dread legions arrayed before him. He stood to the last between those that are helpless and those that would have their way with the weak, just as this boy has done today. Remember this and perhaps one day you too may serve the Emperor on the field of glorious endeavour.'

'The Emperor protects,' cried the big man's compatriots, the cry was repeated by the well-schooled pupils. Only one of the Astartes remained silent and he seemed intent on Corgan, the man in the white tabard seemed to have an unhealthy interest in what had just transpired. While the children and the other giants offered their adulation to the invisible Emperor, that man spoke to Corgan in a quiet, assured voice.

'You will be tried and tested boy. We must be sure that you are pure of heart if you are to join us.'

With that he turned away. The orator spared Corgan one final glance before following.


	3. Rescue

'Are we ready to go?' Corgan asked, hoisting himself up into the Valkyrie gunship transport compartment.

'Ready and waiting, sir,' Biggs replied.

'Any word from Bellicus?'

'Not since they confirmed their arrival at Gourangi. Deacon called in to say they were sending the settlers back via the road. I'll check with the Pardus armour to see if they've stumbled across them yet.'

'You do that,' Corgan nodded, tugging his white-enamelled helmet onto his shaven head and proceeding to check the twinned hell-pistols at his belt. 'What about Wolfe?'

'Deacon said he and the other two platoons had deployed forward, into the jungle.'

Corgan looked up, incredulous.

'Into the jungle? That guy's crazier than I thought.'

Major Escabar Corgan of the Orrax 567th had been put in operational command of an area covering more than sixty thousand square kilometres. The Gurshun Veldt was the only cleared area of ground within his remit, surrounded on all sides by thick, unforgiving jungle that thrived in the nutrient rich plain-soil. It was only clear terrain now because the Adeptus Explorator had cut down over half a million mature Gunga trees with the help of their Mechanicum allies. The reason for this wholesale deforestation was partly to furnish them with land upon which they could build the city of Gurshun itself, which was little more than a provincial space-port after three decades of existence. As such it was the only viable landing zone for the Imperial Navy's lighters and heavy lifters within that area. There were over three million settlers living in the city or out on the veldt, with a further two hundred thousand eking out a living in the jungles around it.

It was a big responsibility.

The Orrax themselves and the infantry divisions of the Vandian Junkers had deployed close to the fringes of the jungle while the Pardus Armoured Brigades unloaded their vehicles at the massively overstretched space-port itself. Corgan had arrived in the second wave of transports with the van of his regiment. The first wave, of which Bellicus Company had been a part had been deployed earlier in the day with orders to help evacuate seven small prospecting settlements deep in the jungles to the east. Now that his men were deployed, Corgan was eager to get out to Gourangi to see who, if anyone, had survived the morning.

He'd commandeered seven Valkyrie gunships for this purpose, five of them occupied by troops from his hard-knock Argo company, the other two would be on pick-up duty.

The men of his command were hand picked from the roughest and toughest survivors of the three legions demobbed on Fered Roathi. There wasn't a single ex-Arbites among them. In their white-enamelled carapace armour over matt-black body-gloves and armed with short-pattern Hell-guns they were a force to be reckoned with.

All the Orrax boys were veterans, but these were the biggest and the meanest. Men of Corgan's ilk.

The jungle blurred beneath them. The side-hatch gunners tracked their weapons side to side, watchful for any signs of friendly or unfriendly movement. The thick canopy undulated unbroken from horizon to horizon, creased only where the road ran from Gurshun to Gourangi. It was little more than a dirt track. The jungle would have swallowed it within weeks had it not been kept clear.

'What's our ETA?' Corgan had to shout to make himself heard over the howling turbines just outside the half open hatch. Biggs checked his chronometer.

'Gourangi in three minutes,' he replied. 'I've had a report that the Vandian scout elements have located the settler's train. They request permission to escort them in.'

'Negative,' Corgan shook his head. 'Tell them to get their arses into Gourangi. The settlers stand a better chance if we're stalling the bastards.'

'Six of our boys were with the caravan,' Biggs yelled. 'They request permission to hitch a ride back to Gourangi.'

'Fine by me,' Corgan yelled back, standing from his seat to get a better look out of the hatch. 'How far to the colony?' he yelled, shoving the door-gunner out of his way.

'About three or four kliks.'

Corgan squinted into the distance, shielding his eyes against the glare of the Gungan sun. There was a dark smudge against the distant horizon. Intelligence had said that the hive-ship was likely to be sixty percent in tact despite having crashed through the atmosphere. They were tough bastards, this 'Nids.

Sixty percent meant a heck of a lot of them would still be alive, spilling from the dying remains of the mother-ship like maggots on a corpse. They'd fan out quickly, their warrior types seeking for potential threats to eliminate while the smaller creatures moved behind them, devouring everything remotely organic and digesting it into a foul miasmic ooze. The Imperial tacticians hadn't said why. They hadn't needed to.

All Corgan needed to know was where to point his men at.

xxx

Deacon was out of ammo. He drew his knife. It was a Devil's Claw, three and a half feet long with a razor-keen cutting edge and serrated on the reverse. Hollow and half filled with mercury it had awesome cutting power for its size. He called it Kiershan, after his elder brother, long dead now. Kiershan had killed a Catachan Devil before he succumbed to its venom. He'd saved Deacon's life. Now Kiershan was saving his life again, as he had many times since his death.

The blade flashed as he wielded it with the efficient and deadly grace that his kind were renowned for. His footwork was flawless, unencumbered by the corpses of man and xenos that lay broken all around him. His balance was perfect, like the balance of the blade itself. The edge bit time and again. Clawed limbs flew and ichor splattered him until he was purple with their blood.

He remember the last time he'd fought Tyranids. Back on Kolic Char. He'd been a raw recruit. Soft as ploin-flesh next to the men around him. He'd seen his old sergeant, Jamma, wielding a blade remarkably similar to his own. That one was tinted red, however, and was a powered variant. It cut through tree boles thicker than a man's thigh with less resistance than warm butter. He'd killed a score of the things in close combat before Deacon had even realised they were on him. He'd fought hard that day, and for seven weeks afterward, but never as hard as he fought then.

The Orrax around him fell away, wary of the swinging blade in his hands as well they should be. The 'Nids seemed to sense that they'd met their match and powered in to meet him, seeking to bring him down in a tide of tooth and claw.

He cut them down as though they were corn in the field. Deacon had killed Catachan Devils too. More than one before his induction into the Guard. These things were nowhere near as fast or as deadly.

But there were so many of them.

He risked a glance around and saw that less than half of his squad was still standing. There was no sign of Gabes. They were losing ground. The barricades were being torn out from beneath them and there was just no end to the deluge of xenos filth.

Hope was scarce. But who needed hope anyway. They were the scum of the galaxy. Fighting was all they knew. So they fought.

xxx

When Captain Chulez rolled into Gourangi with his Junkers it was to find the whole settlement awash with rampant violence. The place was swarming with the Gaunts, led by the slightly larger and deadlier Warrior variants, but they didn't seem to be making much headway.

He tried to make out what it was they were trying to get at but his view was obscured by the central dome and its stubby outbuildings.

A handful of Gaunts saw him and his fifty-strong detachment and started heading his way.

'Deploy... deploy!' he bellowed. This was his first experience of command, recently promoted to lieutenant and put in command of a platoon-sized detachment of his fellow Junkers. The enemy scared him, but what scared him most was frakking up his first command. He fought down a sudden surge of panic.

More of the xenos creatures turned at the sound of his amplified voice and the jungle on either side started to rustle ominously. He hoped it was just the wind as the 'Nids started to swarm.

Suddenly and without warning, a massive silhouette appeared in the sky above the clearing. Chulez remembered hearing about winged Tyranid variants that would fall upon the unwitting from above and brought his cut-down autorifle up to bear.

White-carapaced forms, flashing in the sunlight, detached from the silhouette, falling on rappelling lines from the rear of the flier.

He held his fire, breathing a momentary sigh of relief as the open ground between him and the 'Nids began to fill with hard-cased soldiers of the Orrax regiment.

These toughs were truly terrifying to Chulez. In a way they were more frightening than the 'Nids themselves. And their commanding officer was the scariest of them all. Standing in the middle of a pathetically small looking group of white-armoured soldiers Major Corgan was bellowing expletives in an unending torrent more relentless than the Tyranid advance.

It almost gave Chulez heart. He instantly wondered why. Why would he find encouragement in such abuse? But he realised that it wasn't the abuse itself that gave him goosebumps, it was the fearless, undaunted attitude with which he conducted himself. Chulez caught his first coherent words from the hard-knock Major.

'What are you waiting for, Candlemas? At 'em you lazy bastards! Our boys are dying in there.'

The Tyranid swarm that had turned its attentions to Chulez upon his arrival didn't get chance to swarm forwards. They were charged instead by the fearless men of Orrax and their las-cracking Hellguns. Grenades went off amidst them, sending up clouds of purple ichor and strewn body-parts. Gaunts fell dead under the withering torrents of las.

'C'mon, Major!' cried one of the six Orrax that had hitched a ride on Chulez's Chimera. 'The lunatic leapt from the track-guards and ran to join his commanding officer. The others followed him with looks of relish on their faces as more Orrax deployed from the Valkyries above.

The fliers screamed up and away to a holding pattern high above, watching what they could of the alien advance and waiting for the word to evacuate the wounded.

Chulez decided it was about time he and his Junkers did something constructive.


	4. The Insider

**577.M41 – Five Rivers, Fered Roathi IV**

Corgan polished the shiny new rank pins on his sleeve for what must be the seventeenth time. He had already burnished them until they glowed. He forced himself to stop before he wore away the white enamel set into the brass cups. He was struggling to get his head around the absurdity of it all. Plenty of other penitents had made sergeant and many ended up leading men in the field as their officers caught the fuzz. But this was unprecedented. Not only was he being recognised as a hero because of his actions, he had been given an official rank as a result. Command rank no less.

'Major Corgan of the 567th Orrax Grenadiers. Has a certain ring to it, doesn't it?'

Biggs grinned. 'I think they'd have had a mutiny on their hands if they hadn't given you something other than just a medal.'

'Suddenly, my friend, it seems that I have some big plans for this outfit.'

'Like what?' asked the sniper.

'Like cleaning up the command structure for a start.'

'Commissar Vaughn?'

'Nah,' Corgan sniffed, 'He's harmless enough. Too much of the old Raven in him to be much of a liability. I'll keep him in check. It's those damn Catachans and their mob that I'm more concerned about.'

'What do you propose?' Biggs knew all about the vendetta since he'd served with Corgan up on the ridge. He'd watched Corgan plug one of their scivvies with his own eyes. Since then Wolfe had tried for Corgan several times, even at the potential expense of victory in the Delta.

'They won't try for me while we're in digs. They know I'd expect it. Hell, they know I'm always expecting it. But they also know that they have a better chance of success in the middle of a scrap. The regiment can't afford that kind of risk.'

'It's a shame. They'd all make good officers.'

'How many are left?'

'According to our intelligence there's only five pure-blooded Catachans left; Wolfe, Deacon, Gabes, Starkey and Harko. But they've got a whole gang of cronies. Most of them probably wouldn't die for the vendetta but they'll fight to protect those five.'

Corgan pursed his lips thoughtfully, drawing his brow down over gimlet eyes. He rubbed his clean-shaven scalp distractedly. Wolfe was the problem. He'd been given Bellicus Company at the same time Corgan got bumped up to Major. There'd been nothing he could do to gainsay it.

'I'm gonna take care of Wolfe. He's always been Jamma's successor and as long as he's alive the others will still be a thorn in my side. Without him they might just lose their purpose and start towing the line.'

'What do you want me to do?' Biggs was a man of action. He may be slow and methodical, but he got results.

'First thing, recruit some thugs,' Corgan replied after a pause. 'Make sure they're the real dregs of the regiment. We may need some of them to run interference later so no one that we're gonna miss if they get themselves pasted. Second and most importantly, I want an inside man. He doesn't have to get too deep, just close enough to give us advance warning if they start planning anything.'

'Someone trustworthy.'

'Yeah, but also someone who can't be connected to us. Keep it quiet.'

'Consider it done.' Biggs moved to the side-counter and poured two glasses of the local spetzka, a clear liquor that burned on the first pull but settled in nicely after the second.

'Good.' Corgan replied, taking the proffered glass and sparking up one of the thin but pungent cigars Pars had scored for him. 'Don't bother to tell me who it is. I don't want to know. I think I'll have my hands full just stopping Wolfe from gaining the support of the other company commanders. If he gets them on his side it'll be the end of my command.'

'Whatever we end up having to do, we'll have to go very carefully. Vaughn may be a pussy-cat but even he won't tolerate open dissent. And if we move against Wolfe openly the others company commanders aren't likely to just sit back and watch. The regiment would fall apart.'

'I won't let that happen.' Corgan replied. 'By the time we make our move we'll have the majority. Any that aren't in our camp will just have to fall in like everybody else.'

Biggs held out his glass to make a toast. 'Imperator conservo nosta animus!'

The chink of glass on glass rang out and the two men threw back their shots.

'What did you do before you ended up on Orrax.' Biggs asked. 'It seems strange that I've never asked before. Some unspoken law of the penitent, I guess, but we're beyond that now…'

Corgan waited for a moment before replying, remembering the old days with a flicker of regret.

'I was a racketeer and a gunslinger. A good one. Had the run of the Underhive and not a frakker could touch me... A finger in every pie... at least until the shit hit the fan!'

'Nothing changes, friend, only the details'

'Pour me another, I'll drink to that.'

xxx

In a murky bar on the sea-front, nursing a quart of the strong local ale, the newly promoted Sgt. Deacon mused over his fate.

Deacon was the strong, silent type. His dark good looks had always stood him in good stead with the ladies, but his quiet nature inspired mistrust in his fellow man. He'd never understood why. Something to do with his physical size, for sure, but maybe it was more to do with the fact that he was inscrutable. No one, not even Wolfe, could read his thoughts... and that was the other scary thing – he actually thought about stuff. His was not just an empty skull. He had intellect and intuition and all this in combination with the natural advantages of having been raised on the most infamous death-world in the galaxy. He was a big man with hidden depths!

He'd been the youngest member of Jamma's platoon when they went AWOL on Necromunda back in fifty-six. He'd gone along out of loyalty. Catachan bred that into a man. You had to be able to count on the strong arm of your neighbour when the jungle itself was trying to eat you. Necromunda had changed all that. Jamma had betrayed them all to money and though none of them had ever said it out loud that betrayal took a toll on any man of Catachan. Madd Starkey had been the first to peel away, disillusioned, then Bevier. They'd all expected that Wolfe would be next but he'd stuck firm and quelled all their secret doubts with his drill sergeant's attitude. Deacon had been able to see behind the mask, though. Wolfe had come to hate Jamma with such a passion that to kill him would have been to destroy the one thing that gave him purpose. Hence his hatred for the Major. Corgan had killed Jamma. Wolfe had taken it personally. All that rage had to have an outlet somewhere.

With Jamma and Bevier dead on Necromunda, Wolfe had become their surrogate leader as they went into exile on Orrax. Deacon had watched him send men to their deaths. Corgan hadn't actively hunted any of them down so far as Deacon knew, but he'd proved himself eminently capable of looking after himself. If Wolfe told you to go after Corgan it was a death sentence. And what was worse, Wolfe knew it. The only reason he never went after the man himself was because he couldn't kill Corgan any more than he'd been able to kill Jamma – it would have been an act of emotional suicide. Roarke hadn't been acting on Wolfe's orders when he faced him down in the pell-mell of the Delta war.

So none of the others had ever understood Wolfe as Deacon understood him. They had been afraid of him, but they'd been afraid because of what he displayed on the outside, like a bush-warbler that used the vibrancy of its feathers to secure territory or a mate. Deacon was afraid of Wolfe for much more subtle reasons. The man would destroy everyone around him until only he and Corgan remained. Deacon didn't know what would happen then.

It had to stop. Deacon wasn't going to die because of Wolfe's inadequacies.

He drained the pitcher into his mug and sighed heavily.

'Mind if we join you?'

Deacon looked up. Biggs. A pre-eminent member of Corgan's inner circle. The diplomat, the thinker. Arines was his right hand man in the field. All brawn, the muscle. Wolfe hadn't been able to kill either of them yet, but it wasn't for lack of trying. Deacon didn't know the name of the younger man with them, but he'd seen him toadying after the Big Man plenty of times.

'Sit if you want.'

They pressed themselves into the booth. Biggs leaned forward.

'You're a bit of an anomoly aren't you, Deacon?'

Deacon fixed his gaze on the man. He had a sly look on his face. Deacon had no idea what transgression had landed Biggs on Orrax. He couldn't picture the man doing anything wrong. But on second thought that smirk might easily have been the reason. Deacon's skin crawled.

'What do you mean?'

'Wolfe and Starkey, they don't go anywhere without a whole bunch of cronies. You, on the other hand... you seem almost to be inviting trouble.'

'Inviting who?'

'Don't play games.' Biggs changed the subject. 'You know exactly what I'm talking about. I bet Wolfe is squirming in his boots since Corgan got promoted.'

'I couldn't give a flying turd.'

'I know. You do your own thing... go your own way. Like I said, you're an anomoly!'

'Is there a point to this? Stimulating as this conversation may be, I prefer to drink alone!'

Suddenly the smirk disappeared and Biggs looked almost earnest.

'Meet me in the Block and Tackle at 0130. It's not a trap.'

They got up and left, rudely jolting the table as they rose and stalking off as if they'd just had a sniping session. What the hell was all that about?

xxx

The Block and Tackle was another dingy bar further down the waterfront and even more deserted than the last one. Deacon had drunk a fair bit, reasoning that if it was a trap at least the alcohol would numb the pain. The streets had been similarly deserted, in fact he hadn't seen a soul for the last ten minutes. He was too drunk to be nervous, but not drunk enough to believe himself invincible either.

Biggs emerged from a dark side-booth just long enough for Deacon to spot him. A curt gesture beckoned him over.

'Wha's this about?' asked Deacon, willing himself to enunciate every word and failing.

'Wolfe's finished. Anyone that aligns with him goes down with him. Corgan wants to limit the damage and I think you can help us to do that.'

'So all that talk in the other place was jus' for show?'

'We have to keep up pretences, can't have the old boy getting wind of his own imminent downfall.'

'What are you goin' to do?'

'Nothing really, just back him into a corner he can't get out of. All sorts of things become possible when you're given command rank.'

'Why should I help?'

'Like I said, damage limitation. The boss thinks you have potential. You'll be able to take up the reigns when Wolfe's out of the picture.'

'You want me to betray him?'

'Not at all, unless keeping secrets is against your code of loyalty. We want you to save as many men as possible, preferably the goods ones like yourself.'

'What do you want me to do?'

'We'll tell you that later. For now, you can give us the heads up if Wolfe start plotting anything. If you prove yourself trustworthy you'll be spared when the shit goes down.'

'That's all?'

'Corgan's a callous man, I can't deny that, but he's not a stupid. We're being sent into a potentially very hot spot and Wolfe might not be the only man to get burnt along the way. Corgan just wants to make sure that the regiment survives. Survival often calls for a sacrifice. You understand that?'

Biggs rose to his feet and held out a hand, speculatively.

'I apologise for any disrespect I may have displayed earlier. I can assure you it was a sham. I have nothing but the deepest respect for you.'

Deacon shook his hand,. That alone felt like betrayal. Necromunda had changed them all.

xxx

'Is this confirmed?' Corgan asked, tossing the dataslate onto his desk.

Biggs nodded slowly, overcome with trepidation. It wasn't just that they were being shipped out to another warzone. Nor was it the suggestion that they would be fighting some undisclosed xenos form. No. It was the roster of Imperial Guard regiments being shipped out there to join in the fight that concerned them the most. Both men felt like they'd been punched in the gut.

Corgan had been punched many times. He recovered quickly.

'Then we're going to have to watch our backs, my friend.'


	5. The Hunted

Blood, ichor and tree-sap steamed in the afternoon jungle sweat. The heat was made worse by the crackling ozone of hellgun discharge. Corgan was glad of his inter-cooled bodyglove as he worked to repel the Tyranids from the Gourangi settlement.

In a temporary lull in the fighting, he walked over to Wheln to get a sit-rep on the deployment. He reasoned they didn't have much time before the larger xeno variants started showing up. It would be nice to know that backup was on the way.

'Punch up tactical, I want a run-down of how the deployment is going.'

'I've been monitoring the vox traffic, sir. The Pardus Armoured are seventy percent deployed, they're currently getting their line tanks entrenched along the city limits. The Vandians're helping the Munitorum deployed rockrete barricades for the infantry, so they can protect the tanks.'

'What about the Catachans?'

'They've deployed into the jungle, we haven't heard anything since.'

Corgan frowned. He'd been put in overall command of four companies of the Catachan Third. They were supposed to be moving into the dense jungle north and south of the Gourangi road and pushing forward. They were supposed to be the first line of defence.

'Right, I need to know they're doing their job, if they won't talk to us we'll have to find another way to keep tabs on them. How's the civilian convoy doing?'

'Tactical said they were about a mile outside of the city three minutes ago. They should be safe within the half hour.'

'Okay, stick to me like glue, I'm gonna remedy the Catachan situation.'

Corgan stalked towards a group of white-armoured soldiers hunkered behind a shredded aluminium barricade, watching the tree-line for movement with the eyes of experienced xeno-fighters.

'Deacon! Front and centre!' The burly sergeant responded with alacrity, his blood still up and pumping hard. 'Get the men organised, we're pulling out of Gourangi. I'll be watching our behinds with a squad from Argo Company and I want a Valkyrie to run cover and to pull me out when the fighting's done. You can use the rest to ship the wounded out, the Vandians'll provide any extra transport you might need for the rest of the boys. I want a slick withdrawal, by the numbers, you get me?'

'Sir!'

'Biggs, did your boys get all the equipment I ordered?'

'Pretty much. We were a bit short on the more specialised weapons but the rest came good.'

'Including the scout walkers?'

'Yeah, why?'

'Because they're gonna be our link to the C3 boys. Grab Wheln and get your scout platoon mustered out.'

'Affirmative!'

'Come and find me when you're done, Wheln, I'll be at the sharp end!'

Suddenly the becalmed settlement was a flurry of activity once more. Deacon was a natural leader, quiet but firm. He called in the Valkyries to lift out the wounded and got the remnants of Bellicus mounted atop the Vandian Chimeras. Argo Company responded well to his orders too. In no time at all the Orrax were ready to move out.

Biggs was done even sooner and Corgan got him and Wheln mounted up in the last of the Valkyries to spot for him.

Eleven men kicked back their heels in the ruins of Gourangi and waited for Deacon's cavalcade to get clear. The jungle seemed to lean in close around them. The settlement, piled with corpses and torn-out aluminium sheeting, was far too quiet for comfort. Even the jungle itself seemed hushed.

'Peace at last,' Corgan quipped, evincing a round of sombre chuckling.

Peace was at a premium these days.

xxx

Corporal Choker plunged his vehicle into the dense jungle some seven miles north of the Gourangi Road. He had always been dexterous and a lifetime of driving heavy goods lifters around the spaceports of Cardinal Secundus had stood him in good stead to be selected for the scout platoon. His sentinel walker was lighter and far more agile than the lifters he'd trained in, but it came with additional challenges.

The first that he had encountered was balance compensation. The lifters had been squat and heavy, with a low centre of balance and a plodding gait. The sentinel was long-legged and somewhat top-heavy, but in comparison it was as agile as a flightless bird. The machine spirit did what it could to compensate for the vehicles bipedal motivation, but the mark of a true sentinel pilot was the ability to push his ride to the limits of its tolerance thresholds. Rapid movement resulted in the sentinel leaning forward while the legs tried to keep up, thrusting the cabin forward at high speeds. To stop too quickly was to risk a fall and if that happened in a combat situation it was certain death. Righting a fallen sentinel was no mean feat for one man working alone.

The problem here on Gunga IV was the rough-terrain modification. It was like having to operate a lifter's crane arm while simultaneously being on the move. It had taken him days to get the hang of it and that had been in the cargo hold of a navy hauler. Now he was putting the theory to practice, he was still gauging the differences. The torque of the chain blade as it cut through the thicker growth had a subtle but noticeable effect on the vehicle's balance and trim characteristics. The sticks were just that little more leaden in his sensitive hands.

It was a challenging role, but one that he relished.

'Choker to all units, how's your progress?'

'Auspex shows I'm falling behind,' Hedro responded. 'Having trouble co-ordinating the chopper.'

'No problem, Hedro. Arnie, let's drop back and keep pace with Hedro for now, we don't wanna get strung out.'

The three sentinel walkers in Choker's section were covering a twenty metre spread. North of them was Golan's section, and covering the region south of the road was Belke. The going was slow, but they were still finding their walking feet, as it were.

Choker checked in with tactical to find out what the situation was.

'Argo is still in the woods with an aerial spotter. The main part of the forward Orrax element is two hours out of Gurshun and making fair headway. The city is almost locked up.'

'No word from the Catachans yet?'

'Not as yet but that's nothing unusual. The Catachans are fairly autonomous from the moment they take to the field. It's a necessary part of their modus operandi.'

Choker knew that Corgan didn't agree, but then the stories he'd heard suggested that the Major had ample reason to mistrust the Catachans. Choker himself had no qualms about them. Deacon and Gabes had both operated sentinels in the past and had taught the scout platoon as much as they could in the sterile environment of a cargo hold. They'd both seemed like solid soldiers. He wondered if they'd survived the rapid deployment into Gourangi.

'Chokes, I'm getting some strange readings on my instruments…' Arnie reported.

'Interference?'

'Some kind of ghosting.'

'You remember what Deacon said about that?'

'Yeah, how was that for a pep talk?'

'Tell me about it. Stay put, I'm on my way to cover you. Hedro, close up on my current position and watch the line. Keep your eyes peeled for stalkers.'

'Got it, Chokes. Weapons primed and ready, finger's itching!'

Choker turned forty degrees and paced towards Arnie's position, one eye glued to the auspex, the other alert for movement in the dense thickets outside or potential obstacles that might impede his progress. The strength of a sentinel pilot was his observation skills, attention to detail was paramount. It helped that Choker was a natural with the controls, leaving the larger part of his brain free to watch out for hazards.

The hard ping of Arnie's walker coming into auspex range sounded in Choker's ear-piece. The scanner showed the hard contact several meters off to his right, static, waiting.

'I'm not picking up anything bigger than a cat out there, Arnie. Whereabout were you reading it?'

No reply.

'Arnie, are you still reading me?'

Still nothing.

'Hedro, are you reading me okay?'

'Nothing wrong with the vox, Chokes.'

'Alright, I'm going silent for a few minutes, if I'm not back in touch in five, we're both dead. Bug out and call it in, got it?'

'Loud and clear, corporal. The Emperor protects!'

Choker cut the vox. If Arnie wasn't talking, it was likely that he had a very good reason for it. Either he was dead, or he knew there was something nasty within earshot.

Choker vectored in on Arnie's walker, tracking his weapon-mount side to side in preparation for sudden combat. He almost found himself praying for a sealed cabin. He would have welcomed the added sense of security even while cursing the relative lack of speed and manoeuvrability, not to mention the unbearable airlessness of a sealed unit.

The jungle was more spaced out here. He spotted the scarred foliage that indicated Arnie's passage and decided to detour, approaching from a different angle in case his man had been ambushed.

He came to the edge of a small clearing. The muddy ground was torn up and the larger trees showed signs of chafing. Some breed of indigenous fauna must have used the clearing as a wallow fairly recently. Arnie's walker stood in the shaft of sunlight that broke through the canopy above. The cabin was empty, the small door swinging ajar.

He wondered briefly if Arnie had gone for a piss, but it seemed unlikely he would do so in the situation and even less likely that he wouldn't take his las-rifle, which was still mounted behind the door.

Choker picked up his auspex scanning, the instruments were more likely to see the stalker before he did, so he was told. The problem was that the scanner only scanned a forty-five degree segment directly ahead of the walker. He could easily be outflanked by a stealthy enemy. To counter this he rotated the gimble-mounted cabin through three hundred and sixty degrees, keenly alert for any sign of the electronic ghosting that Deacon had said often indicated the presence of a stalker.

There, just a flicker across the screen, but reason enough for an ultra-tense Choker to let rip with his multi-laser, shredding the flora ahead of him in a storm of concentrated las. After a ten second burst he let go of the paddle

He moved carefully forward, one finger ready to let rip once again, the other ready to activate the chain-blade terrain modification. It could be used as a weapon too. The Catachans had taken great pains to teach him how to use it as such.

Nothing moved. Splintered trees pierced the dense carpet of pulverised plant material. Sap added a tangy scent to the steaming jungle air. The only sound was that of the faint breeze in the branches above. Even the insects were silent.

Choker's sweat ran cold, sending a shiver down his spine.

He was about to swing around and sweep the jungle to either side when the carpet of detritus exploded upward in a maelstrom of leaf mould and shattered branches. The vines interlacing the canopy writhed as something huge disturbed them with long, scythe-like claws that closed in on the walker's cabin in a vice like grip.

Choker was paralysed with terror as the domed head, complete with its drooling tentacles, loomed before him, swaying hypnotically and stooping ever closer.

The multi-laser was aiming into space, completely useless at this angle. But in his state of shock Choker's hands had convulsed on both triggers. The laser fired off into the jungle while the chain-blade howled to life.

The sound brought Choker back to his senses and he slammed the control stick to the side, sweeping the chainsaw into the creature's side and bisecting it. The chitin-armoured legs fell away but the upper torso stayed clamped in place, the creature hissed in rage and pain, the hissing seemed to reach into the back of Choker's head and bring all his fearful primeval instincts bubbling to the surface.

The chain-blade swung again, stabbing deep into the creature's torso and churning out a bloody cascade of chitinous fragments and sticky, acidic ichor.

Finally the claws relaxed and the thing fell away, leaving dents and deep scratches in the roll-cage and cabin armour. The tang in the air took on an altogether more repulsive aspect and Choker resisted the urge to gag. He wondered if the musk was a signal to others of its kind, telling them Emperor only knows what about what had transpired in the last few seconds. He wouldn't have doubted it.

Choker took a moment to recover his wits. Then he keyed the vox on and called Hedro in.

'Come in and cover me, I've found Arnie's walker but I think he may be KIA.'

'But what about covering the line?'

'We can't do that with two machines anyway, and something tells me it'll be best if we stay close together.'

'Alright, I'm heading over.'

Choker backed up to the clearing once more, trying to calm down, blood was still roaring in his ears and his heart was a jack-hammer in his chest. His vest was soaked through with his sweat and he could hear water sloshing around in the foot-well. It was probably just condensation but he reckoned a fair amount of it was salty sweat. He drew up just inside the clearing and dismounted, making sure to unship his las-rifle before dropping to the loamy ground. He had to find Arnie.

The walker stood just as it had before, like it was waiting for something inexplicable.

At a glance, there were no tracks in the soft ground around the vehicle, until Choker realised that the barely visible triangular indentations were probably stalker tracks. The bastards were hollow-boned, like birds. They didn't leave much sign. It was therefore difficult to make out what had gone on in the clearing.

He scanned the periphery of the open area, peering into dapple-shaded thickets. He found a spattering of blood which led him to a trampled path through the undergrowth. Poking out of a darkened hollow beneath a thicket he spotted a pair of Guard-issue boots. This didn't look good.

He heard the hydraulic clamour of Hedro's walker approaching from the north. Slinging his lasrifle over one should he took hold of Arnie's boots and dragged his limp, lifeless body out into the clearing.

As he propped the corpse up against a tree bole he realised what the cause of death had been. The back of the man's cranium sported a bloodless hole, bored directly through the bone, about seven inches in diameter. The brainpan had been sucked clean.

'They weren't lying,' he muttered to himself as Hedro clanked into the clearing. He signalled for the man to maintain visual and auspex scanning as he headed back to his own machine. Plugging himself back into the vox he explained what had happened to his last remaining team-mate. There was a new respect in Hedro's voice as he replied.

'You plugged one of them?'

'Eviscerated is a more accurate description. I got lucky.'

'Lucky? Man, there must be someone watching over you and that's no…'

He never finished his sentence. The second stalker materialised out of thin air, shimmering like a mirage in the balmy shimmering light of the jungle. Its long, chitinous claws plunged in through Hedro's roll-cage, piercing his body and rupturing his internal organs. Blood surrounded the scene like a sudden rise of mist. Hedro's screaming drowned out the stalker's sibilant hiss.

Choker reacted quickly, re-arming his multi-laser and firing off a concentrated burst that tore into the thing. It went down, horribly wounded, the hissing becoming a high-pitched whistle that quickly rose out of Choker's audible range. Another burst finished it off, but the jungle was moving around him.

A third stalker circled him, moving too fast for him to track with his bulky weapon systems, little more than a blur to the naked eye.

He moved, lurching into the jungle in a vain attempt to evade the creature. He kept to the slightly less overgrown parts of the forest, meaning he had less work to do with the chain-blade and could maintain a higher speed.

The stalker rammed into him from the left, keeping pace with a long legged lope, moving like a predatory, flightless bird. The claws flashed out at him, glancing off the side armour or through the roll-cage, barely missing Choker himself.

It back off when he flailed with his chain-blade and appeared on the other side. This time the beast's rapier claw found Choker's flesh, tearing through his right cheek. Blood ran down his neck and saturated his already sweat-soaked vest and he yowled in pain, fighting to maintain his concentration.

The chain-blade flailed again, a glancing impact sliced a chunk from one of the thing's many arms. But he knew he was fighting a losing battle, running a futile race for survival. It was only a matter of seconds, perhaps minutes if he was lucky.

He was running out of clear paths. For a few moments he was able to outpace the stalker as the jungle got thicker on either side. But soon he would have to slow down or employ the chain-blade with maniacal skill to keep up his speed.

If he hadn't been wounded, perhaps he would have noticed that the path he was on had been recently cleared. He didn't see the chainsaw scoring on the trees on either side of him or the scorched undergrowth.

He did see the gout of flaming liquid that seared dangerously close to his cabin. A second sheet of ignited promethium lanced out across his path. The jungle around him burst into furious flames. The intensity of the heat reached out to him with crackling orange fingers as he crashed through the dense growth.

Thick, entangling vines wrapped themselves around his cabin, constructing like a family of pythons, hungry for the kill. The sentinel slowed, struggling to find traction and maintain an upright position.

Choker gripped the sticks like they were his only lifeline, in his mind they were, but the walker wasn't going anywhere. He was hung up, dangling from the jungle growth like bait in a trap. If only there was a trap…

He kicked at the door, desperate to get out. He was a sitting duck but at least he could get at his rifle. The door wasn't shifting. He clambered out through the roll-cage instead, reaching down for his weapon, straining to get at it without falling.

With this in hand he scanned the dense growth around him. Flames dominated in the direction he'd come from. He wondered briefly what had caused them, but was too preoccupied with survival to realise that perhaps he had been rescued.

He jumped down from the cabin, getting tangled up but freeing himself with the bayonet of his rifle. The forest around him was startlingly quiet. Only the sound of the licking flames disturbed the eerie tranquillity.

He ventured towards the flames, rifle in hand, wary of getting trapped by the fire.

The stalker burst from the inferno, thrashing and screaming that high-pitched scream. Choker's las-rifle barely seemed to effect it as it careened headlong towards him. He dived to one side and it ran straight past. Choker scrabbled around to watch it go... and then he saw the other sentinels.

There was one on either side of the trail, cunningly disguised in the dense thickets and tangles. Dappled green and black to blend in with their surroundings, the heavy flamers wrapped in camo-netting laced with fresh-cut vines and branches and festooned with leaves. They'd been lying in ambush. Choker had led the thing straight to them.

Both vehicles moved out, revealing the fact that their hiding places had been cleverly crafted to allow them to extricate themselves quickly and move on. He wondered how long it had taken them to set up.

One of the machines chased off after the 'Nid, spraying the beast with flaming prom and reducing it to a black stain on the jungle floor. The other stomped over to where Choker was lying prone on his buttocks

'Need a hand, babalon?' called the burly pilot, whose skin was entirely coated with green and black camo-paint. Only the whites of his eyes stood out.

'I owe you my life!' Choker blurted.

'Life be cheap, what say you and me cut yo' hoss free so we can skidaddle out o' here?'

'My crew got pasted, about fifty metres back that way…'

'I'll send Cholic back to collect tags and give them proper cremation, ya ken?'

Choker nodded his head with more than a little regret. The Orrax had no real history of recovering bodies for proper burial. It had sometimes been done back on Fered Roathi, but more as an afterthought than anything else. No one expected to have their remains honoured when they were gone.

They were a nihilistic lot, resigned to their fates even though they'd volunteered to continue in the Emperor's service after being pardoned. He supposed this was the quickest, easiest and most honourable way of disposing with their remains, rather than leaving them to rot as so many had back in the Delta.

'That way, them stalkers be no havin' a way of tracking you, babalon, otherwise you as good as fresh meat on a rack!'

It seemed there were more practical reasons for the cremation, too.

He swallowed. Only at that moment did he truly realise that he had survived. Saved by his skill and more than a little luck. He wondered how long that would hold up!


	6. Enemies Afore Us, Enemies Behind

The Catachan Third's presence on Gunga IV consisted of fifteen companies of veteran jungle fighters. The four companies assigned to Corgan's battle-zone had fought the Tyrnaid scourge in three other campaigns, out in the Segmentum Ultima where the threat they posed was greater than in any other part of the galaxy. As a result, they were utterly unfazed by the situation in which Choker had found himself.

The fourth company was appropriately and somewhat ironically named the Stalkers. A Captain Pollinski was the commanding officer, a gnarled man with several bionic replacements in his arms and shoulders and a mechanical eye on the left.

He looked like perhaps the least compromising man in the galaxy. Even Corgan had the air of a shrewd negotiator, even at his most ruthless. Pollinski had less imagination, it seemed. But Choker couldn't fault the man's ability.

The Stalkers were bivouacked ten miles into the jungle. They would use this as their temporary base of operations, conducting scouting forays and picket patrols day and night. The camp was made entirely from natural jungle resources. Vines, sapling trees and matted growth trained into position and tied off. Even the vehicles blended in with the terrain.

They hadn't brought their hellhound tanks, Choker heard them bemoaning the loss but knew that the terrain wasn't amenable to them. He stood by as his escort, Giles, spoke to Pollinski on his behalf.

'Him say 'e been sent by the Big Man, some Major or other. Him say it for communication reasons.'

'Communication? What for?'

'Me think he no trust us.'

'So he sends us an amateur, to give away our position and compromise the whole operation. Good tactics, those, wish I'd thought of 'em.'

'Him quite good sentinel pilot, me think. For a gaffa, anyway…'

'Look at that thing?' Pollinski gestured at Choker's ride, the white-washed armour looking a bit sorry for itself. Sticks out like a sore thumb and what goods a multi-laser at these close quarters anyway?'

'Sir, I was taught to pilot that thing by a Catachan,' Choker ventured, wondering if that would change emancipate them. Pollinski took two strides toward him, stopping less than a hand-span in front of the Orrax, looming over him.

'I know where your regiment hails from, Corporal. The Orrax are little more than a bunch of thieves, murderers and rapists. Whoever it was taught you lied. There ain't no Catachans on Orrax.'

'Not only were they Catachans, sir, they also claimed to have fought with the Third back on Necromunda.'

'Necromunda you say?'

'That's right.'

'So what are their names?'

'Deacon and Gabes are the ones that trained me. Captain Wolfe is in charge of Bellicus Company.'

'Wolfe? That name rings bells, Corporal. Maybe you are telling the truth. We'll see.'

They were interrupted by a commotion to the south.

'That'll be my patrol coming back in from down Gourangi way.' Pollinski headed off. Choker stayed with him. His orders had been to find a commanding officer and stick to him like glue.

The men coming into camp weren't the ones making all the commotion, it was the men in camp greeting them, slapping and butting shoulders in a show of solidarity Choker had never witnessed before. The Catachans in the Orrax regiment had never seemed this close knit. A closer look led him to conclude that the men in camp hadn't expected ever to see their patrol again. Choker supposed it was a result of being born on a death-world. This community had been forged through loss and futility, desperation and hope. It only held up for as long as the members of that community stuck together. As a result, it would always cause for celebration when a small party such as this managed to survive a foray into enemy contested territory.

Choker had been hardened of body and soul in the ice-mines of Orrax. The ethos there had been cut-and-thrust, every-man-for-himself. Although Fered Roathi had changed them somewhat, this was still a prevalent attitude in the regiment. This level of affection and attachment was non-existent. Life was cheap on Orrax and it bred a nihilistic, cold-heartedness into its colonists. Death was so commonplace that any life other than your own seemed less worthwhile. On Catachan, though lives were taken just as arbitrarily, what life there was was valued above all other things. Although they didn't dwell over the dead, in much the same way as the Orrax, they were committed body and soul to the living. He wondered if that made them better at what they did.

Pollinski accosted the patrol's sergeant to receive his report.

'Gourangi is bug central. They seem to be concentrating all their efforts on wiping it out. Maybe the stalkers marked it up while it was still fully populated. Their threat assessment will only have increased with the arrival of the Orrax.'

The sergeant caught sight of Choker and locked his jaw.

'Carry on, Vorlidan. This fella's baby-sitting us for the Big Man himself.'

The sergeant chuckled in a sudden and brief show of mirth. He was a huge man with a tiger-like presence that spoke of great strength, intelligence and ability. He carried the short-bodied lasgun with an easy, nonchalant grace. On his hip he carried a huge machete alongside his standard-issue bayonet. His back-pack sported a 12-gauge shotgun in a sling and he carried shells in a bandolier across his chest. Like all the other Catachans his skin was almost entirely coated in green and black camo-paint.

Choker held out a hand as he had on being introduced to Pollinski. This time the man accepted his gesture of friendship.

'It's nothing personal, I'm just following orders.'

'You came in alone?'

'No, I lost my team-mates on the way in. Stalkers, three of them. I wasted two and Giles and Cholic saved my ass from the third.'

'You took down two by yourself?' Vorlidan seemed mildly impressed.

'I got lucky with the first, the second was laying into my buddy when I wasted it.'

'Still, not bad for a gaffa.' That term again. He wondered what it meant. After a brief pause he decided to ask.

'Slang for anyone that hasn't been to Catachan. It means something like "You have no idea!"' Vorlidan grinned. Choker found himself warming to the affable sergeant.

'I think I'd rather have gone there than Orrax,' he said. 'You have no idea how cold it gets there…'

'Like I said… gaffa!' Vorlidan chuckled

'This is all very warm and cuddly, sergeant, but can we get back to the report?'

'Sir! Like I said, Gourangi is swarming. Stalkers are covering the woods to the north, we took down a couple, while the brood-swarms concentrate on wiping out the settlement. They seem to be having a bit of trouble doing so.'

'How come?'

'From what I could gather it looks like Major Corgan is commanding the holding action personally with about ten of his men. They've got a spotter in the sky and the main part of their force is pulling back down the road.'

'Alright, get a platoon organised, we'll head out to relieve the Major. The sooner he bugs out the sooner the 'Nids'll lose focus. Then we can get to work.'

'Sounds like a plan,' Vorlidan replied. Choker held up a hand.

'While I defer to your superior experience of how these creatures work, could you explain why this is the best course of action? That way I can help you co-ordinate with the Major.'

Vorlidan explained.

'The 'Nids' first objective is usually to eliminate any sign of civilisation.' Vorlidan explained. 'Population centres pose a threat to their primary directive because of the risk that some effort will be made to exterminate the ripper swarms. It wouldn't be easy, but the hive i voracious and likes to devour a planet's resources as quickly as possible, both to avoid retaliation from neighbouring systems and so that they can move on to the next world. By resisting for longer than is necessary, the Major is drawing 'Nids toward him like moths to a flame. Of course, the situation on Gunga is slightly different to a conventional Tyranid deployment because the mother-ship these babies deployed from has had to crash-land. As a direct result of this I would guess that these particular 'Nids will prove to be slightly less predictable and much more ferocious. But they will still do what they can to digest the planet, it's the only thing they exist for.'

'So that's why you fellas spread out like you have, so as not to attract too much attention?'

'Exactly. The spooks'll try and pin us down with pheromonal marker-lights, but we'll have moved on before the broods can fall on us. It's a tactic that has worked before to buy time for a co-ordinated counter-attack. We'll distract them for a while, preventing them from concentrating on Gurshun. By the time they win through with any sizeable force, our allies will be prepared to take them on.'

Choker nodded thoughtfully. It certainly sounded like these men knew what they were doing.

'So, Corporal,' said Pollinski. 'You should radio in and advise your Major to evacuate as soon as he can. We'll plug the gap in the only way that'll really work.'

xxx

Gurshun was wreathed in promethium exhaust fumes. The Leman Russ variants of the Pardus Armoured choked the narrow streets, their tracks churning up the packed earth road-surface. At the city limits, huge Munitorum earth-moving machinery prepared ramped grooves in the loamy earth. The Pardus tanks rolled into them so that only the top half of the hull protruded above ground level, allowing the hull and sponson weapons to fire as well as the turret mounted battle cannons. Beyond the earth-movers, grav-haulers towed rockrete barricades out beyond the hull-down machines. Gang-workers, assisted by the dun-uniformed Vandian infantry, manoeuvred these into position before disengaging the repulsor lifts and dropping them to the ground.

If it came to a direct defence of the city, the Imperial Guard would be ready.

Arines stood on the observation deck of the central environmental survey tower, a swaying construct of iron girders, bolted together and set in a rockrete foundation sixty feet below his vantage point. The narrow maintenance catwalk was little more than a grille-work platform with an iron railing festooned with survey equipment and communications antennae.

The ground below was a hive of restless activity. He found himself resisting an overwhelming urge to hawk and spit over the side and watch to see if he hit anyone. Lita grinned at him, obviously understanding his dilemma.

Arines busied himself with the magnoculars instead, straining to get a glimpse of the events unfolding at Gourangi.

'Deacon reported in,' she mused. 'They're about thirty minutes out. No word from Corgan yet.'

'What about the scout platoon?'

'All but Choker's team have reported in. No luck in finding the Catachans, though.'

'We haven't been able to raise Choker at all?'

'No response. They just get static when they try his frequency. Said something about maybe he's being jammed.'

Arines wondered what could be causing that, unless it was the Catachans themselves. It wouldn't surprise him.

'You see anything through those things?'

'Naw.' He passed the instrument over. 'Occasionally see specks that might be Valkyries but the haze in the background makes it hard to see anything.'

The eastern horizon was dominated by a mountainous haze of shifting grey swirls. It looked like smoke or storm clouds at this distance, but tactical said it was the crashed hive-ship's spores being ejected into the atmosphere. The already voracious growth rates of the native jungle flora would accelerate tenfold, drawing the minerals from the earth, the better to be harvested by the xenos. The digestive organ's of the Tyranid hive would then form across the surface of the planet. Digestion pools would form, filling with organic soup of rendered jungle flora, consumed by the ripper swarms. Capillary towers would rise from the jungle canopy, belching biomass into space in spite of the fact that there was nothing there to collect it up. The life of Gunga IV would be ripped from the surface of the verdant world and scattered amongst the stars.

It was a bleak view.

Suddenly the tower vibrated as a white-armoured soldier mounted the ladder at ground level. White-haired Perri climbed level with the catwalk but didn't venture out onto it. It wasn't built for more than a couple of bodies.

'Word in from Choker at last,' he offered in his quietly confident tones.

'What's he got to say for himself?' Arines growled.

'He's hooked up with the Catachans fourth company, the Stalkers. They're moving to support Corgan's withdrawal.'

'About time. Well, at least we've got a link to them now. I don't trust those bastards any further than I can see them in those emperor-forsaken jungles.'

'Fliers coming in,' Lita interrupted. 'Ours!'

' I'll go get them sorted out. Stay here and keep watch.'

Perri led the way back to ground level as the snub-nosed fliers came in, slewing about on their vectored engines. They came to land in the cleared space directly beneath the OP and the rear exit ramps levered down.

'Get some stretchers up here!' Arines bellowed, seeing that there weren't enough able-bodied men on the fliers to unload the bloodied survivors. 'And a medical team, damn it. We knew there were wounded incoming, why weren't they here waiting?'

'Sir, they've been delayed in the heavy traffic.'

'What, medical vehicles don't have flashing blue lights any more? What's the frakking problem? Damn provincials, what do they think this is? Fly the bastards in if you have to but get it done...'

His tirade was interrupted by a monumental explosion from somewhere in the small city. A cloud of black smoke billowed up into the clear blue skies, lit from beneath by voracious flames.

'What the frak! Perri, get on the damn radio and find out what that was...'

Lita was gesticulating furiously but over the commotion he couldn't make out what she was saying. She started down the ladder at a reckless pace. When she reached the bottom she was short of breath. The thirteen week journey to Gunga IV had seen many of them fall out of shape.

'What did you see?'

'That was the local hospital going up. Something big is going down...'

'Shit! We can't have that, not when we could be facing a siege within days. Gather up your platoon and head out to investigate. I'll make sure the security details are doubled up.' Arines didn't want to think about what would happen if whoever had done this found a way to sabotage their ammo-dumps. Two thousands tanks were just so much metal without their munitions.

'Got it.' Lita pounded off to find her unit.

'Sir,' it was Perri, he was holding out the vox-horn. 'It's the commissar...'

'That's all I need,' Arines growled under his breath as he took the receiver. 'Arines here!'

'Captain, what was that explosion all about?'

'We don't know yet, Commissar. I'm sending in a team to investigate.'

'I won't mince words with you, Captain, but do you really think that she-ape is fit to the task? The high-level tactical briefing spoke of a recurring precursor to many Tyranid invasion fleets. They quite regularly seed civilised worlds with insidious cults in an attempt to undermine the administration. Would it seem to make sense that this act of terrorism has been perpetrated upon the very eve of a xenos incursion by just such an organisation?'

'Sir, I suppose it would...'

'Well then, I will lead the investigation myself. This is no job for a blunt instrument. Tell Sergeant Kierst to meet me at he motor-pool.'

'Yes, sir!' Arines replaced the horn with an expletive.

'Damned black-tops, never know when to keep their frakking noses out. Perri, run and catch Lita...'

xxx

Lita was the First Sergeant of Argo, second only to Corgan in the company's own hierarchy. In his absence, she led the elite echelon of the 567th while Arines maintained overall command. The commissar would generally have deferred to the company commanders in tactical situations, but this was slightly different.

They were up against their own here, and as such, perhaps it was assumed that the Orrax may hesitate to dispense the Emperor's justice. In actual fact, Lita would have been quite happy to do so, being less morally upstanding than most Imperial Guardsmen. The Orrax were pardoned criminals. Okay, some of them had been interned for non-violent crimes, but that hadn't meant that they'd had to fight less hard to survive on the death-moon of Orrax. Or that they'd not had their compassion beaten out of them by the Adeptus Arbites. They were only on Gunga IV now because they'd displayed their talents for survival whilst simultaneously dealing out death to the enemies of the Imperium. The men Lita commanded were the most unflinching veterans of that reprehensible regiment. They'd kill whomever she told them to kill.

The commissar was primarily a political officer, well used to the machinations of military hierarchy, the cut-and-thrust of battlefield administration. They were schooled in Imperial Law, trained in investigative techniques, including those pertaining to interrogation of suspects. She assumed he was taking the reigns because there might be some thinking to be done down the line. She had to admit that if that was the case, she'd rather let him do his thing and kill whomever he told her to kill.

The less complications she had to deal with the better.

The eight-wheeler she flagged down pulled onto the road on which the motor-pool was situated and she banged on the cabin roof. The driver skidded in to the side of the road and she jumped down, waving him off as he pulled away again.

Darron was there to greet her, along with Dror and the rest of the platoon. They looked like they were itching for a fight and she couldn't blame them. The sooner they whipped themselves back into shape the better. They'd gotten fat on the bulk-hauler, they needed to get their hunger back.

'Any idea what this is all about?' Darron asked her.

'My dear, sergeant,' came the imperious tones of their regimental commissar, approaching from the rear of the motor pool concourse. 'This is about putting an end to the heretical machinations of a xenos cult, rooted deep in the heart of the Gurshun community.'

Lita and Darron turned to face the recently promoted Commissar Vaughn, trim as an Imperial Aquila in his peaked cap and long black storm-coat of glossy leather.

'We have enemies before us and foes at our backs, my friends. They think that we will take this attack lying down. Let us illuminate them.'


	7. The Cancer

Hestor Luek thought he might just about be finished heaving his guts up. The urge to vomit had subsided, leaving him kneeling piteously in front of the toilet bowl in his scruffy little hab, looking down at the congealed remains of last night's meal.

He reached back and gingerly stroked the small, scabrous growth nestled at the base of his skull. It moved and the nausea returned with a vengeance. After another seven minutes of dry-heaving, he decided he'd leave it alone.

Ever since they'd gifted him with the cortical leech he'd regretted joining the Children of Castor. His initiation into the cult hadn't given him any inkling as to the true nature of the group. He'd been sucked in, thinking it was just another sub-cult of the Imperial Creed. His devotion had seen him rise quickly from the ranks of the neophytes to become an initiate. Another six months later he'd been put forward for admission to the Brotherhood.

They'd brought him into a darkened room, lit only by a scant few flickering candles. The centre of the chamber had furnished a small table, upon which a black, iron-bound casket was laid. They'd blind-folded him, uttering three questions as they walked around him three times.

'Do you submit in all things to the will of the Father?'

'I do!'

'Will you uphold the Father's designs even unto death?'

'I will!'

'And is it your desire to receive the Father's deepest secrets that you may better understand his purpose?'

'It is!'

'Then kneel, Brother Luek, and receive our Father's seed.'

He went down on his knees and heard the casket creak open. The next thing he knew, something wet and gelatinous was being pressed against the base of his skull. He cringed, but they held him still. Something speared into his neck, sending a jolt of pain flashing through his body. He blacked out.

When he awoke, it had been in a comfortable bed laden with white sheets. He'd sat up, wondering where he was. Then he noticed the blood on the pillow and remembered. He touched the thing at the base of his skull with revulsion and the vomiting had begun. It nestled within his unruly mop of hair, completely invisible to anyone who didn't know what to look for.

He'd run from that clean but curiously empty room, heading home. After three days of sweats and fever and half-hearted attempts to remove the parasite, they had come back for him. His fellow Brothers of the Children of Castor had treated him with gentle kindness as they took him back to the secret basement where they held their most intimate of meetings.

'You have survived the first of the Trials of Brotherhood. It is time to face the second and if you are not found wanting, you will face the third. Kneel.'

Once again he had knelt on that hard, uncarpeted floor, wondering what more horrors they could subject him to. The Brothers retreated to the shadowy corners of the room. A door slid silently open and the thing that had haunted his nightmares ever since had emerged from the deeper blackness beyond.

It would have been taller than a man had it not stooped forward, but though it walked on two legs there was nothing else even vaguely human about it. Its feet were cloven hooves, its legs cadaverously thin and sheathed in hard chitin. Its body enclosed in a hard exo-skeleton. Four arms, tipped with enormous, razor sharp claws, emerged from the horned shoulders. Its domed head played host to a pair of utterly alien eyes that glinted evilly in the candlelight. When its lips drew back in the rictus grin of a deaths head it was to reveal rows of needle-sharp teeth and a long, pointed tongue that dripped with acidic drool.

Luek almost lost his mind as the xenos monstrosity approached him, but something was keeping him in place. He suspected the parasitic _thing_ on his neck. A name implanted itself in his consciousness, along with a genetic memory that was not his own: Genestealer. Perfection made construct.

The thing loomed over him, almost as though it was assessing him by scent. Acid drool dripped on Luek's cheek but even the pain could not break him from his revery. It touched him with its clawed hands, not quite applying enough pressure to break his skin, but giving him a good idea that it would not have taken much to cut him to ribbons.

It drew back, seemingly satisfied, and withdrew into the darker room once more. Luek got the distinct impression that other shapes were moving in the darkness. It was almost as if he could sense them, though he could not think how that would be the case.

'The Guardian is satisfied. You may enter the Inner Sanctum. You may kneel at the Father's own feet.'

Any assumptions he had once had that the Father was an oblique reference to the Emperor melted away. He knew now that the Children of Castor had nothing to do with the Imperial Creed. A part of him, or perhaps it wasn't part of _him_, told him that the Emperor was irrelevant, insignificant. He fought an internal battle to maintain his faith, but something was moving in his mind, blanking out his previous loyalties, shredding his personality.

He stood. Slowly and almost against his will he walked forward, entering the darker room. After a few moments his eyes grew accustomed to the dimness, but he already knew that some immense presence occupied a roughshod throne at the centre of the back wall, flanked by two Genestealers.

Out of the murk, the Patriarch materialised, slowly gaining form and definition. He was similar in some ways to the Genestealers, his domed head completely hairless with those evil eyes glinting. His pointed tongue lolled from slack lips. But his body was horrendously immense, bloated and exuding an alien stench that permeated the close air of the chamber. His torso crawled with small, slimy creatures and Luek knew without asking that these were similar to the one embedded in his own skull.

More forms moved forward from the edges of the room, men and women at a glance, but horribly mutated. Their skin was sallow and blotchy, their limbs bent at odd angles. Some of them had those domed heads and needle teeth. Others boasted extra limbs or cloven hooves. This was the fate that was lain in store for him. Damnation!

'Welcome my child,' came the insidious hiss of the patriarch. 'I am Castor.'

As he staggered to his feet in his run-down hab, Luek fought to expel the memory of the Broodlord. He flushed the toilet and imagined he was washing away the last three weeks. But it was no good. Soon they would come for him again. He'd stayed away as long as he could, resisting the chemical persuasion of his symbiote. But he could feel them moving around him with that mysterious sixth sense. He knew that plans were afoot and soon enough he would be drawn back into the fold to make the Father's designs a reality.

But he fought his own transformation with all that was left to him. He would not succumb until the last vestiges of Hestor Luek were consumed by the parasitic leech. He chanted a quiet litany to preserve his sanity.

The Emperor protects! The Emperor protects!

xxx

The local hospital was a small affair, having only had to cater for the fifteen thousand or so residents of Gurshun. Nevertheless, this was the place where the Imperial Guard Medicae staff had deposited their supplies. This was the place where three hundred Imperial Guard Medicae staff had been based. This was the last hope for any wounded Imperial Guardsmen in the Gurshun battlezone.

It was pandemonium. The main building was a gutted ruin. Fire-control crews had scrambled, but the traffic congealing in the streets had delayed them long enough to ensure that the building was a write off.

Medicae staff, most of them walking wounded themselves, worked to save the lives of their peers. There were pitifully few of them still standing.

Fire still raged in the peripheral wings of the structure. The Fire-crews were busy trying to bring it under control. Commissar Vaughn accosted a ranking fireman for a report. It was stilted and the man was somewhat dazed, his sooty features attesting to his gargantuan efforts so far. Vaughn gave up on him and sent Lita to find someone who knew what was going on.

Meanwhile, he deployed twenty of veterans they'd brought with them to quarter the surrounding area, looking for any sign of the saboteurs.

Finally, Lita brought him a local security guard. He'd been on duty at the front desk of a local prospecting guild's headquarters, directly opposite the hospital. He was still in shock, but he managed to give a fairly cohesive report.

'It was a truck, a ten wheeler, canvass-topped,' he began. 'I didn't get a good look at the drivers, but that won't matter because they were still in the cab when they drove it through the façade of the hospital. It must have been loaded with some kind of high-explosive material, probably the stuff the Adepta Geologis use in their blasting charges. There'll be plenty of it in Gurshun, but they'd have to have connections to get at it.'

'I'll be following that up,' Vaughn replied, making notes in a small datapad he'd carried in his belt.

'Anyway, they drove straight through the front of the entrance foyer, running down ten or eleven orderlies in the process. A few seconds later, the whole place went up.'

'Thank you. I'll be needing your name and address in case I have any more questions.'

The man provided his details and Vaughn dismissed him.

'Come with me, sergeant.'

Lita followed with the rest of the platoon, they headed straight for where the entrance foyer had once stood. The metal framework had once held almost four hundred panes of flawless glass. Now it was just a twisted metal skeleton surrounded by crystalline shards. Further in, the glass had melted to form pitted glaciers, testament to the heat of the flames. The truck was little more than a lump of tortured metal. The plastek fittings and rubber tyres were entirely burned away, leaving a caustic smell in the air. Vaughn moved to inspect the cabin.

'Look at this, sergeant,' he called. Lita moved around to inspect the remains of the two occupants of the vehicle.

'What the…'

'Precisely my reaction,' he replied. 'Cover it up. We must maintain a veil of secrecy to keep this from the local populace. Have the remains moved to the sick bay back at HQ. I'm going to track down an adept of the Biologis corps to tell us what who these freaks were.'

xxx

Tebal Crane goggled at the sight of the two charred corpses. He could tell just by looking at them that there would be very little genetic material left on the heat-warped bones.

'Sir, I specialise in the classification and study of xeno florae, I know little to nothing about genetic mutation in humans, or… whatever these things are.'

'You can perform a simple gene-sampling exercise, can you not?' Vaughn demanded.

'I can if I can find any genetic material suitable to the task…'

'Then please spare me your objections and do it. I want to know who these men were. I've secured access to the colonial database for you to cross-check your findings.'

'But…'

'Do it, Doctor Crane!'

The Commissar stalked out of the room, leaving Crane with the mutated remains of two Genestealer cultists.

xxx

'What do we know?'

Lita shrugged.

'Next to nothing. Looks like you were right about this being a xenos cult, but we haven't been able to find any signs of them in the neighbouring area at the time of the attack. No one seems to have seen anything.'

'It is my experience, sergeant, that no matter how secret a cult may be, it has to have links to the outside world. We have to find those links and follow them back to the perpetrators of this crime. I would rather not have to wait until the next atrocity to be able to do that.'

'To be fair, Commissar, we're not trained investigators. We mainly just kill people! Hence we don't really know what questions to ask.'

The Commissar pursed his lips.

'Of course, and that is why I am here. We'll get to the bottom of this, sergeant, one way or another. Meanwhile, I want you to see if you can secure us a Valkyrie. We'll need to be able to deploy rapidly to combat this menace.'

'That might be a tall order, sir.'

'Tell them the success of our defence of Gunga IV depends upon it. I cannot understate the importance of rooting out this evil.'

Lita saluted with a long-suffering sigh and turned on her heel to do what she could.

xxx

Choker emerged from the jungle onto the cleared land around Gourangi in the middle of the late afternoon. The scene of carnage went beyond anything he'd seen at Five Rivers. Xeno-forms were heaped against the makeshift barricades, broken and oozing. The buildings were spattered with their gore. In and amongst them, the odd white-armoured form of an Orrax trooper could be glimpsed, but these were far outnumbered by the Tyranids.

There was no sign of movement as he led the Catachans out into the open ground. The two sentinels of Cholic and Giles had been assigned to lead the platoon out, clearing the way for the infantry, who were near invisible as soon as they entered the denser foliage.

He keyed into the Orrax command frequency and hailed for survivors.

'It look like they bought it or bugged out, to me' said Giles.

Choker's vox fizzed in his ear and a familiar voice responded to the sentinel pilot's remark.

'Tell your friend he'd dead wrong, we've got you boys bang to rights!'

A human form stood suddenly, silhouetted against the strong afternoon sunlight lancing down into the clearing. Several others materialised from their hiding places, all training hellguns on the newcomers.

Major Corgan walked out from the settlement as though he owned the place. He pretty much did. Pollinski trotted over to meet him.

'I don't remember asking to be rescued,' said Corgan, loud enough for the whole platoon to hear him.

'This ain't no rescue, Major. We're here to seal the Gourangi Gap.'

'Does it look like we were having any trouble?' Corgan replied.

'Sir, this is just a taste of what the 'Nids'll throw at you if you don't bug out now. We can hold the line with a far more disparate approach, far better than your squad will be able to when they cotton on that you're here to stay. I'm advising you to leave us to do our jobs while you get back to Gurshun and do yours…'

Corgan closed the gap between the two men in an instant, the two men standing nose to nose. Choker couldn't here what Corgan said to the man, but Pollinski didn't back down.

'I can only repeat my advice, Major. I can't order you back to Gurshun.'

'Just you remember that, Captain. This is my war.' He keyed his vox-set. 'Wheln, get that bird down here. We're headed back to see how much of a mess Arines has made.'

The rest of Corgan's squad, seven men, all told, paced out into the cleared ground, pulling off re-breather masks and retracting visors. He recognised these men. Mass-murderers or bar-room brawlers, a few ex-guardsmen. They were the hard-core heart of Argo Company. Even the other Orrax were scared of these guys. The Catachans didn't even flinch as they dispersed through the settlement.

'Choker stays with you, Captain,' Corgan said as a parting shot. 'I don't care how you operated before, I want to know exactly where you are at all times, understood?'

Pollinski nodded. In a way, Choker was relieved. The Catachans were much less frightening than his fellow Orrax.

xxx

It had happened.

The disaster at the hospital.

It could only be them.

They were moving.

Luek left his hab and meandered towards the centre of town. The streets were awash with panicked civilians. The local Arbites were having trouble controlling them. There was looting and rioting in the southern suburbs. The end of the world was nigh. Luek knew the truth of it.

He found himself gravitating towards the quarters reserved for the Imperial Guard regiments nearby. A whole hab-block had been cleared to house the Vandian Junkers. It was a little run down and only a few families had still been resident there, but the Guard were used to hardships such as rising damp and insect infestations.

He entered the entrance hall and spotted a Guardsman sitting sentry duty just outside the super's storeroom. The Vandian stood, holding out a hand to stop him going any further.

'I need to speak to someone in authority…' he gasped. Suddenly his brain felt muzzy. A sub-sonic squeeling insinuated itself upon his consciousness. The Vandian seemed not to notice.

'What seems to be the problem, sir?' asked the sentry. He'd been told to report any strange occurrences directly up to the command centre. The look of urgency in Luek's eyes must have reached him.

'Enemies… within…' Luek struggled to speak. The thing on the back of his head writhed, causing his stomach to churn and his brain the throb. He whimpered as his eyes rolled back in his head.

'Stay right there,' the Guardsman warned him, alarm in his eyes. 'I'll get someone down here right away…' he ducked into the super's room and Luek could hear him trying to raise someone on a fuzzing vox-set.

He fell to his knees. He was fighting the thing with everything he had, but it was winning.

'Hello brother…' it was the Children of Castor. The Brotherhood, no less. Three of them congregated around him. 'It's time to come home, now. You've suffered long enough…'

'Get away from him!' The Vandian had re-emerged from the super's room with his las-rifle in hand. This he trained upon the newcomers with a professional air.

The triumvirate turned to face him as one, throwing back concealing hoods to reveal hairless scalps with distended foreheads. Electricity flickered around their eyes and the Vandian fell back in horror, dropping the weapon to the tiled floor.

One of them handed the recumbent Luek a stub gun, a bulky six-shooter.

'It's time to prove your loyalty, Hestor Luek. Kill the interloper.'

Luek stood up, infused with a strength not his own. His internal self cried out in horror as the pistol came up. He fought the mind-leech. He threw everything he had at it. The pistol quavered in his trembling hands.

Two of the demagogues kept the Guardsman pinned while the third exerted it's will upon him.

'_Kill the interloper!_' The words boomed through the caverns of his mind.

'NO!' Luek dropped the weapon. It shattered the tiles with its weight and the chambered round went off, blowing a chunk from the ceiling.

'He has failed,' said one of them.

'He must be reclaimed,' said a second.

The third picked up the pistol and blew the Vandian's head off.

They hooked their arms under his shoulders and dragged him towards the door as confused and alarmed Vandians began emerging into the corridor, weapons in hand.

They were too late to save their compatriot, but they swarmed after the intruders with a fury born of vengeance.

xxx

'The first report came in seven minutes ago,' Lita had to shout to make herself heard over the Valkrie's jets. 'Some guy walked into the Vandian billets and got the sentry spooked. He called it in. Next thing we know, the sentry's been killed and the guy dragged out into the streets by some goons. The Vandians have got their blood up. It's a running street battle. Apparently the men that dragged him out weren't alone.'

'This is the chance we need, sergeant. Let's get down there and get our hands on the reins,' Vaughn cried, checking his bolt pistol over as the flier homed in on the disturbance at the heart of Gurshun.


	8. Escalation

The insurgents had retreated to a run-down warehouse. It was a sprawling, two storey structure made up of a number of closely connected sheds and storage barns built out of rough cut logs from the surrounding forests.

Sergeant Rakjak had been quick on his feet in co-ordinating the pursuit, surprising the insurgents as they fled the murder scene, carrying their limp burden. But the three men they had initially pursued had not been working alone. Shooters had materialised out of the surrounding suburbs, flocking to the disturbance like moths to a flame. Several of his compatriots had been killed by the surprise assaults before Rakjak had been able to rein in the furious Junkers. Their blood was up. One of their own had been murdered and they wouldn't stop until the killers were brought to justice.

Now they had the insurgents surrounded, but in their desperation they were like rabid wolves. The rebels seemed capable of hitting the Vandians right where it hurt, finding weak spots in their assault and taking maximum advantage – like they could read his thoughts, or something. He wished that a few of his fellow Junkers had thought to bring some heavier weaponry but is wishes were horses he'd be a cavalry commander by now.

'Keep up the pressure!' he bellowed, raking the barricades across the street with las.

'Sarge, look!' Bel pointed into the night sky, picking out a speck of light hoving in towards them.

'Reinforcements?' Rakjak wondered aloud.

The sound of turbine jets roared as the flier made a low pass down the street. The Valkyrie's starboard gunner blew a long line of holes in the warehouse wall as he passed, several insurgents were blown to shreds by the volley.

The Valkyrie pulled into a hover and the rear hatch slid open to disgorge several white-armoured soldiers, led by a Commaissar. They hesitated for bare seconds before assaulting the warehouse, executing a merciless assault that saw another half a dozen insurgents fall dead for an exchange of only one of their own.

'Damned convicts!' Rakjak swore. 'Come on, we're not gonna let those skavvers show us up!'

He charged into the open, backed by four of his own while another three provided covering fire. Solid-slug rounds erupted from the asphalt around him but he passed through the volley unscathed, scratching two of the insurgents and ducking into the cover they'd claimed.

Three survivors took up the covering fire, allowing the men that had covered them to leap-frog forward. Another Vandian went down, blood erupting from his shoulder. As Rakjak made to move forward once more he caught a glimpse of one of the insurgents. He was shaken by what he saw. The man had a third arm, tipped with three hooked barbs like claws. His skin was unnaturally dark, he couldn't tell for sure because of the darkness but he thought it might be blue.

Mutants.

He had a job to drive out all distractions as he advanced once more, urging his men forward. They were obviously dealing with a heretical cult of some kind, but they died just as easily as ordinary men and that was all that mattered.

xxx

Corgan collapsed into his chair. The small office he'd been given was furnished in a spartan fashion. A bed stood in one corner, currently strewn with pieces of his carapace armour. A desk and chair occupied in the other, a washstand the third.

He cracked open his hip-flask, savouring the expensive brandy it contained while he lit a cigar. Closing his eyes he leaned back, trying to find some relaxation. Typically, that was the moment Wheln chose to knock at his door.

'Come!'

The younger man entered, a sheaf of data-slates in his arm.

'The deployment manifests,' he declared, tossing a slate down on the desk. 'Munitions distibution dockets, confirming delivery and receipt; requests for further orders from the Pardus and Vandian Regiments;' a second and a third followed, clattering to the desk. 'This one you may actually be interested in. Progress reports from the other battle-zones and some tactical projections from fleet.'

'Guess what…'

'You don't care?'

'Got it in one, kiddo! Here.' He proffered the hip-flask and Wheln took an appreciative slug.

'I just want to know where my people are.'

'Arines is out dealing with a ruckus between the Pardus and the Vandians, up in the northern suburbs. Apparently they can't get along. Doesn't surprise me, us Pardus are notoriouisly difficult to get along with,' Wheln grinned. 'Lita's out with Vaughn, chasing up some internal threat, I haven't been able to scare up many details on that yet. The others are all in digs.'

Corgan sighed. He didn't know what had possessed Admiral Coen to put him in command of a battle-zone. He couldn't keep track of all the different strings to his bow as it was. Commanding a regiment was about the limit of his military ambitions. He was lucky to have Wheln.

The kid had worked as PA to some bigwig back on Pardus Sacritea. He was an organisational genius. He'd kept the regiment ticking over on the journey here, while Corgan was busy trying to make sure he kept the other company commanders onside. Wolfe had done his best to wrest the command from him en route, but that was another story.

Corgan resigned himself to the role he'd been given. He picked up the last of the data-slates. At least he should make sure he was aware of the bigger picture.

'Have you read all this?' he asked.

'Yeah, for my sins.'

'The Emperor put you here for a reason, Wheln. Give me the low-down.'

'Okay. None of the other zones have seen much action yet. The spooks are out in force but there's nothing unexpected about that. The marines are covering the southern aspect and other battle-groups have managed to cover the evacuation of all the contested townships to the north. They're shoring up the larger settlements just like we are. So far, the biggest problems they've encountered has been forgetting to bring a clean change of underwear.'

Corgan snorted his amusement.

'So we're the only ones that have seen action?'

'Pretty much.'

'And you don't know what Vaughn's doing?'

'Not really, I managed to get Arines on the vox for about ten seconds before coming here. He mentioned something about a possible Genestealer cult, but Vaughn's chasing that up. He's yet to report in but it could be bad news if he's right.'

'Tell me about it...'

'Oh, by the way, the Navy finally agreed to send us some air support. We should be getting three wings of Thunderbolts by morning.'

'Well, at least we'll be able to use those naphthene palmitate munitions we carted down from the bulk-hauler. That should be fun.'

'Nothing beats the smell of napalm in the morning, or so I'm told,' Wheln grinned, as if he'd ever seen the stuff used. Corgan had. Some hive-trash scummer had wired up a ten-gallon canister and dropped it on Bethesda Hole back in Hive Primus. Throne, what a sight that was to see!

'You know how good bacon smells first thing in the morning?' Wheln nodded, listening with youthful intent. 'Well, it's nothing like that... What else do we have here?'

'The tactical information on the 'Nid mother ship makes for interesting reading. Apparently we've got about seven days before the spread makes defending this place a waste of time. And that only if they manage to stop the rest of the fleet from making orbit. There's another seeding ship up there right now. The Navy's barely managing to hold it off.'

'Well, we'll cross that bridge when we come to it. In the meantime, until we've got a firm tactical solution to that particular problem, I'll be happy to know that we've got Gurshun sewn up tighter than a sororitas' smallclothes.'

Wheln nodded, as relaxed as ever. Corgan had yet to see the kid stressed out. He'd gone through the hell of Pelloris Ridge and Five Rivers without so much as batting an eyelid, he could have been out for a stroll for all that it fazed him. Okay so he'd been a vox-operator back then and you tended to keep your vox-man safe, but nothing seemed to touch Corporal Wheln.

'Why don't you get some shut-eye, kid. I'll see you in the morning.'

xxx

Vaughn's Valkyrie settled briefly in the Via Charmion to offload its passengers before lofting into the skies once more. The snap of powerful floodlights added to the clamour of the street battle. The flier illuminated the darkling street as best it could, revealing the strewn bodies of soldiers and civilians alike. The door-gunners provided a hail of penetrative covering fire, mowing down cultists manning the outer barricades from above, bullets spanging from her armoured hull.

Lita drew her squad up behind a Vandian held position. They were hunkered behind a smouldering street-car, popping off shots down the street.

'What's the situation?' Vaughn cried. The lead Vandian, a corporal by his stripes, turned to face the newcomers.

'We've finally got them surrounded in that warehouse complex. Sergeant Rakjak is co-ordinating, I think he's over that way somewhere…' he gestured further up the street, Vaughn ignored him.

'Thank you, corporal, we'll take over from here.' The commissar gave Lita a small nod. The Orrax sergeant grinned and slid her visor down into place. The street turned green and black as she set her helmet to night-vision mode. The green flared occasionally with las-fire or streaked with tracer rounds from the insurgents' solid-slug weaponry.

She keyed her micro-bead.

'Come on, boys, let's take a stroll!'

The Orrax moved out from behind the vehicle in a reckless advance, putting their faith in their heavy armour as they lanced through the cultists' lines. The enemy fire quietened, suppressed by the pin-point accuracy of Argo Company's enfilade. Insurgents flopped out of cover, broken corpses or writhing in agonised heaps.

Lita saw one cultist raise his head over a packing crate to return fire, he jerked and fell back, his head popped like overripe ploin. Pars whooped in celebration of his perfect head-shot.

'Nice one, Pars, don't get cocky!'

'Screw you, sarge! I'd like to see you pull off one of those…'

'I'd guess it's been a long time since you've seen a woman pull _anything_ off, ugly-boy!' Lita quipped.

'They're breaking,' said Fenriss, standing to pump off a sustained volley of hell-gun las. He cut down a couple of the shooters and the Orrax pressed home the assault.

'Vaughn, maybe you wanna get those Vandians organised, some of these freaks may still be alive…' Lita suggested into her bead.

'Good call, sergeant. Keep up the pressure.' The Commissar might walk around like his pants were too tight most of the time, but he wasn't too proud to defer to Lita's leadership when the heat was on.

A couple of cultists had lain in wait as they stormed the last of the barricades. Jopal caught a shot to the leg that shattered his shin and put him on the ground. The rest of the squad didn't even flinch. One of the cultists went down, hosed at close range by Pars and Fenriss. The other made a break for the warehouse, narrowly avoiding the volley of fire that chased him in.

'Fenriss, Pars, with me,' Lita called, 'The rest of you split left and right, cordon off this building and make sure no one gets out.'

Vandians were moving in behind them. Lita waved them back. She didn't need them getting in the way. A few of them ignored her and charged into the building anyway. Lita swore as gunfire rattled out, blowing holes in the thin external walls.

She edged closer to the doorway the cultist had gone through, taking one of three frag grenades from her webbing. Pars covered the other side of the opening and Fenriss moved up behind her.

'Wait for the detonation then hose anything that moves.'

She cooked off the grenade, tossing it in with two seconds the spare. Fyceline smoke accompanied a shower of debris that erupted from the opening and they charged. Pars let rip as he spotted a shadow flitting between two obstacles, but whatever it was he missed. The dim interior seemed deserted apart from the corpses of a couple of Vandian troopers. Packing crates were piled high throughout the high-ceilinged barn. Some had been opened, spilling musty straw and wood-shavings. Abandoned machine parts rusted where they sat. Floorboards creaked underfoot where they hadn't been ripped up by the grenade's detonation, the footings below were shallow and reeked of stagnant water.

'Move in!' Lita hissed.

They each chose a route through the maze, Fenriss moving off to her left, Pars to the right.

'Sarge, we've got the other entrances covered,' came over the bead.

'Okay Rhys, move in but go carefully. Keep an eye peeled for stairways.'

'Got it!'

She reached a juncture between the looming packing crates. No movement in either direction, but she could hear the scuff of boots nearby. She ducked right, bright and alert. Pars was out here somewhere, it'd be a shame if she _accidentally_ shot the guy.

Suddenly a shadow lurched from a gap between crates, lunging at her with the flash of razor sharp claws. Her armour stopped the initial strike as she lashed out with the butt of her rifle, catching her assailant in the gut and doubling him over.

The second lunge saw those claws lance through her bodyglove and into her flesh, finding a gap between the ceramite armour plates guarding her torso. It wasn't deep, but it was painful and would need attention. At that moment, with a sudden rage filling her senses, all she cared about was returning the favour.

This time her rifle connected to his domed head with a satisfying crunch. The mutant went down as if pole-axed and writhed on the floor, groaning. She put a hellgun bolt though his temple and moved on.

At the centre of the barn a broad space had been cleared. Pars was already there when she arrived and Fenriss came in shortly after her. Rhys and the others reported no resistance as they homed in on her position. The place was abandoned.

'That was way too easy,' Pars remarked.

Lita couldn't have agreed more. Something wasn't right.

xxx

Rakjak reached the centre of the barn moments after the Orrax. He almost got himself capped in the process.

'Welcome to the party, sergeant!' the leader of the Orrax contingent lowered her rifle and held out a meaty hand. He'd taken her for a man at first, what with her beefy frame, but the voice was definitely that of a woman.

'Glad you could gate-crash,' he spat back, bitter at the fact that his thunder had been stolen so effectively, but grudgingly impressed by the efficiency with which they operated. The sergeant just grinned and his hard feelings started to thaw.

'I didn't see many bodies on my way in?' he commented.

'Just one. Could have been a heroic last stand…'

'That's what we need to find out, Sergeant Kierst,' Vaughn interrupted, striding into the open space, flanked by a Vandian corporal that Rakjak didn't know. 'Ogrest here claims to have been one of the first out of his bunk when the sentry was murdered. He saw three men dragging a fourth into the street.'

'The man that walked in rambling about enemies within,' Kierst elaborated.

'At the moment that's what I'm assuming. Whoever it was, it's apparent that he was trying to turn himself in when these three assailants came for him. If we can recover this man, it may shed light upon this whole affair. Prisoners can be interrogated, but we could get so much more from a willing defector.'

'So what do we do?'

'Well, it's possible, that this was just a cover to allow them to slip our erstwhile contact away, but if so it was one hell of a sacrifice to make for one man. A bullet in the brain would have been far less costly. My gut tells me they never intended for it to escalate this far, they're saboteurs, not guerrillas. I want this whole place locked up tight and searched from top to bottom. There must be some clue we can follow…'

xxx

Giles and Cholic had expended a full canister of promethium each by the time Gourangi was razed to the ground. The Stalkers had been careful to check for survivors before committing the bodies of the slain guardsmen to the pyre. They'd turned up one survivor.

Haik was a rat-bastard murderer from Argo Company, one of the men Corgan had brought in with him. He was still comatose but the medics said they'd have him on his feet within a couple of days. Choker reckoned they should have left him to burn.

The night was coming down when the second Orrax survivor wandered in from the woods, caked in Tyranid ichor and mud. It took Choker a few minutes to recognise Captain Wolfe.

Several of the Catachans, including Vorlidan, trotted over to greet him. Wolfe didn't seem to welcome the return to his old regiment as much as Choker would have thought, despite the warm welcome they gave him. He was outwardly cold, his eyes darted suspiciously. Orrax had changed him.

Choker edged closer to see if he could make out what was being said but the Catachans were all soft-spoken.

He heard a reference to Night Reapers and a man called Vins. It could have meant anything, but Wolfe seemed to receive the new with some relief and perhaps a little trepidation. Choker wondered what the man had done to end up on Orrax. Vorlidan had told him that the Necromunda mission was nearly twenty years ago. Very few of the regiment had survived from those days. Those that had now formed the upper echelons of company command throughout the Third, or were dead and buried on the worlds they been posted to since.

Wolfe was coming home after a long absence, but he looked afraid.

Choker wondered if he should report this in, but the Catachans had told him that the spooks could sometimes detect vox-traffic and even if they couldn't understand it they could use it to home in on the transmitter. It was best to communicate only when on the move and even then as little as was possible.

Suddenly the activity intensified at a soft-spoken order from Pollinski. Giles waltzed over in his ride.

'Saddle up, babalon. We're movin' out…'

xxx

Night swathed the jungle, a stifling blanket cast across the livid canopy, reducing the jungle's innards to a stippling of grey on black. Shadows haunted the surface of Gunga IV, wraiths howled and chattered in the tree-tops.

In the heart of a briar-thicket a Gungan boar kicked and wheezed as it's life was consumed from within. Spores clogged its pulmonary system, suffocating it slowly, painfully.

When it was dead, small scavengers came across the corpse, piercing the thick hide with needle-like teeth to get at the flesh within. A free meal was never wasted in the jungles that teemed with life of all varieties.

Having taken their fill, the jungle vermin returned to their lairs, regurgitating half-digested flesh to feed their young. Within hours their young corpses were being picked over by neighbouring scavengers, which died in turn to be consumed by other night-creeping creatures.

And so the disease spread. The Tyranids were making their mark on Gunga IV, a stain that would spread out from the crash-site to consume every living creature. The plant-life was already being altered, grasses and vines becoming voracious in their demands upon the planet's surface.

Through this altered landscape, the larger bio-forms of the Tyranid family passed like the marching of death itself. The smaller organisms, Gaunts as they were known to the Imperial Guard, were accompanied by the larger leader-beasts. The Warriors were the synaptic link in the chain that kept the broods linked to the Mother. Behind this screen of living hunger stomped the larger forms, Screamer-Killers and Hive Tyrants, the disembodied heads of the Zoanthropes, borne aloft by pure psychic energy. More followed, forms not yet identified by the Magos Biologis of the Imperium, forming a living tide of destructive force, bio-engineered to wipe all resistance from the face of Gunga IV.

The force that had assaulted Gourangi had been but a small vanguard, originating from a cluster of mycetic spores jettisoned shortly before the mother ship entered the upper atmosphere. The survivors of the Norn Queen's crash had rallied around their leader-beasts. The time had come for a concerted assault on the remaining outposts of the Imperial resistance.


	9. Storm With No Eye

Corporal Choker's last message to battle-zone HQ was brief and to the point. The static that overlaid his transmission made it difficult to make out his words, and the background noise of a raging fire-fight didn't help.

The Tactical Corpsman looked up from his vox codifier, straight into the eyes of the lieutenant whose watch it was.

'They're coming!'

xxx

Corgan woke to the sound of the Pardus tanks coming to life. The battle cannons raised a booming commotion across the town-scape and the fumes of burnt off fyceline propellant permeated the breeze that teased his curtains.

Wheln didn't bother to knock as he entered.

'The men are mustering out by squads, sir. Arines got back a couple of hours ago but he's not fit to command… you should see the bags under his eyes!'

'Alright, Corporal. Tell him he's got the reserve companies. I'll be down in ten minutes. I'm sure Grein can cope until then.'

'Yes sir! I'll have a Valkyrie ready to ship us out.'

Corgan moved to the window and looked out. He'd specifically requested an east-facing room and he had his magnoculars ready to hand. It was an impressive sight.

Through the fog of the Pardus bombardment he could make out the combined cordon of dun-hulled tanks and infantry, with his own white armoured Orrax rushing to join them at the barricades. Beyond them, only just emerging from the jungle treeline, a living tide of xenos filth was spilling across the grassy plain. Most of the smaller variants he recognised from Gourangi, but lumbering behind them were the larger beasts he'd been briefed on. Carnifexes and Hive Tyrants with their razor-armed bodyguards.

Corgan sniffed his appreciation for their show of force and wondered how long it would take for them to wipe Gurshun of the face of the planet.

xxx

The search of the warehouse was comprehensive. The upper floors were eliminated quickly, dusty and sparsely furnished lofts that hadn't been used in months. The storage barns took longer. Every crate was cracked open and the contents inspected. They had to move a great number of them, requisitioning a fork-lifter to undertake the heavy lifting. Eventually, through their diligent efforts, they found that one of the crates was placed directly over a hole cut into the floor.

'Sergeant Rakjak,' Vaughn called. 'I'm taking my squad down this tunnel. I want you to secure this building. Allow no one in or out unless they come with the express orders of Captain Arines or Major Corgan. Not even your own command cadre should be admitted. Tell them you are acting upon the express orders of the Commissariat. Do you understand?'

Rakjak scowled, but he followed this up with a smartly obedient salute.

Vaughn turned to Lita and the eight members of her squad that could still walk. Jopal was propped against a crate cursing over his wound while a Vandian medic fumbled over it.

'Let's go.'

xxx

The subterranean levels of the structure were even more maze-like than the storage level above. A series of maintenance tunnels criss-crossed with more recent scrapings made for a convoluted network of switch-backs and dead-ends.

Their instruments were useless. Magnetic fields toyed with their compasses and electrical interference muffled their vox signals. Sound travelled haphazardly, making it seem as though they were surrounded by enemies when in fact they were hearing their own footsteps echoing back at them.

'Looks like we'll have to do this the old fashioned way,' Lita remarked, taking a brace of thin phosphorous flares from her belt. She broke one and dropped it to the tunnel floor. The squad began to mark their route, dropping flares at every intersection. It didn't take them long to realise they were going in circles, but it was a simple matter of being methodical. They spiralled out from the entrance tunnel, turning left when a tunnel opened on that side, and only turning right when no other option existed.

Usually they could just about make out the light of their own flares glowing along those tunnels that branched right, telling them that they were still going in circles. They kept going.

They'd been underground for half an hour before they found the exit. It was a fresh tunnel, broader than the rest and lit with hooded gas-lamps. Crates of smuggled weapons and ration supplies sat up against the rough-hewn walls.

'Supply dump,' Lita concluded. Vaughn nodded his agreement.

'At least we've found one of their bolt holes. Advance with caution. We need to take some of them alive.'

Lita led the way herself, with Pars right at her side. The others spaced out behind her. Despite the tunnel being broader than the others, it still afforded plenty of ambush possibilities. When it came, the Orrax would not be taken unawares.

They had gone about three hundred yards down the tunnel when the space above their heads lit up with heavy calibre tracer rounds.

xxx

Rakjak was restless. More accurately, he was pissed off _and_ restless. Guard duty didn't appeal to him.

He patrolled the compound anyway. Every entrance was guarded bu four men, two inside, two outside. The perimeter was being patrolled in pairs, twenty feet apart so that they could always see the guys in front and behind them. He had a full squad with him, ready to respond to any call for help, and another squad covering the windows of the upper floor. A man on the roof stood lookout. It was this man that called in when the first rumblings of the Pardus tanks rippled over their location.

'Looks like the attack has started, sarge. Throne, you have got to see this… I can't even…'

'Alright Bolly, get your cheeks down off the roof,' said Rakjak via the platoon's micro-bead. 'I want all units ready to move at a moment's notice. Rally point is the main loading yard off Via Charmian.'

A round of confirmations came back at him as he waved Corporal Ogrest over.

'Take three men, go pick up a couple of our Chimeras from the marshalling yard and bring them back here. We need to be mobile in case we're called up.'

'Gotta be better than kicking our heels here…' the corporal agreed.

'I wouldn't bet on it, pal,' the sergeant growled. 'Get to it.'

xxx

Peddis went down, his armour ruptured. Fenriss got off a reply with his hellgun before his shoulder exploded and he slumped behind a steel crate. The others dove for cover, Vaughn's bolt pistol barking along to the accompaniment of the squad's snap-cracking hellguns.

'I can't see 'em!' Pars shouted.

'What I wouldn't do for a grenade launcher right now,' Lita replied, tossing her second-to-last frag grenade. 'Fire in the hole!'

Instinctively the squad eased, dropping their jaws with mouths open to relax the Eustachian tubes that would allow the pressure behind their ear-drums to equalise. Any explosion or sudden pressure-change could result in a perforation in such close confines. It was still an uncomfortable experience when the charge denotated, but at least they would still be able to hear when the ringing in their ears died away.

The grenade had barely gone off before Lita and Pars were leading the charge. The stubber opened up again but half-heartedly. Several silhouettes materialised out of the fyceline smoke and put up a paltry defence with small arms fire ripping out at them. Under-powered rounds impacted on Lita's breast-plate and ricocheted from her shoulder guard, scathing the polished surface but without the required force to punch through. The shooters were cut down and the duo leapt a sandbag barricade where the stubber now lay abandoned.

They broke out into a broad, underground chamber and came up against some serious resistance. The enemy were holding the room in force, almost like there was nowhere else to run.

Lita could hear someone bellowing in a ratcheting, barely human voice. Then she had other things to think about as a stream of blue lightning blasted into Pars and sent him flying.

'Psyker!' she cried, ducking into what scant cover she could find behind an old sofa which bucked and spat out its stuffing as enemy gunfire tore into it.

Geddies broke from cover and charged down a trio of shooters that had emerged from hiding. He tagged them but blood and shattered armour fragments erupted from his body as more cultists laid into him with their stubbers. Then he too was targeted by the psyker and his helmeted-head exploded in a shower of ceramite, bone and brain-matter. His sacrifice gave Lita a better idea of where the freak was hiding. She took her last grenade from her belt and cooked it off, tossing it with roughly three seconds to spare.

The grenade him apart, sending his rent carcass arcing out of cover.

'Scratch one psyker,' she whooped into the bead and the rest of the squad emerged from the tunnel mouth with Vaughn, hellguns blazing.

Lita picked off a couple more shooters as her squad moved in. The fight had gone out of the cultists. Those that remained on their feet held up their hands in surrender and moved out of their hiding places. After three paces they began to shake. One by one they fell to the floor and started convulsing, frothing at the mouth.

'What's going on?' Lita cried.

Vaughn shrugged as he prodded one of their erstwhile prisoners with the toe of his boot.

'So much for taking them alive,' he muttered. 'Looks like a conditioned response, they were programmed to die if they were captured.'

'Nice tactic.'

'See to your wounded, sergeant, I'll have a poke around.'

Lita sent Varrin and Quaig to retrieve Fenriss from the corridor while she saw to Pars. Rhys picked over the bodies, making sure they were as dead as they seemed.

'How you doing, ugly-boy?'

'I've felt better…' Pars gasped. His hair was standing on end and his armour was rimed with frost. He was going to be fine, as far as she could tell.

'Sergeant!' Vaughn called her over towards the back of the room. A small valve-hatch was set into the rockrete wall, it was still slightly ajar as though they had been intending to use it to escape when they were caught from behind.

'I know what you're thinking, Kierst, but it's not escape route. Take a look inside…'

She shone her lamp-stick in through the portal. It was a cell, an iron box set into the foundations of some structure built above them. There was a man lying prone within.

'You think that's our man?'

'I hope so, sergeant. I really do. Let's get organised and return to headquarters. Time is of the essence…'

xxx

Lieutenant Commander Vossman P. Trae ran the length of the hangar bay with the effortless pace of a born runner. His wingmen sprinted past him, young, impetuous men who'd never heard of conserving energy for later on. They'd live fast and they'd die, still young.

Trae, on the other hand, had flown Thunderbolts for thirty two years. He'd lost only two birds in that time, one of them to old age, the other to a xenos corsair that had already chalked up the rest of his squadron before wounding him and disappearing into the void. He was still out there, somewhere, beyond the Veiled Region. Trae had been rescued, of course, already having become a valued commodity to the Spades of Bakka with his triple-ace tally.

His latest acquisition, _Angelis Incarnadine_, or _Angie_ for short, had done him proud these last seven years. He'd chalked up a further eight confirmed kills in that time, making him an ace five times over and putting him well on the way for a sixth.

He arrived at _Angie's_ berth without breaking a sweat. The engineers were running through the last few checks before she was ready to launch. He checked his chronometer, a Lexion piece that his father had given him on graduation from the Naval Academy on Bakka. It had never lost a minute despite the enormous stresses it had been subjected to in _Angie's_ cockpit. He noted that he still had three minutes left until the launch window was closed. It was plenty of time.

He nodded his thanks to his chief engineer, Chenko, who handed him his helmet and mnemo-gloves. Fully kitted up, he climbed into the Thunderbolt's cockpit and strapped himself into the seat. Placing his hands on the specially modified control stick he felt the thrumming presence of Angie's machine spirit ride through him. He'd had Glavian implants grafted into his hands after losing his last bird, hence the nmemo-gloves that helped him plug into the sophisticated machinery of his Thunderbolt. He was more one with his machine than anyone else in the Spades of Bakka wing.

'Power up!' he yelled, giving the required hand-signal in case they couldn't hear him. The engineers opened the cable spliced into _Angie's _engines and they juddered to life. The deck-crew quickly and efficiently disconnected the starter battery and wheeled the cart away. Chenko moved into the hangar runway to direct him out at in between other taxiing Bolts. He took the opportunity to offer his usual prayers to the Emperor, kiss the photo-pict of his three daughters and touch the rosary beads fastened beside his headrest. Superstitions satisfied, he taxied out onto the launch runway.

Chenko waved a final farewell to his chief engineer as the chain-link embedded into the floor engaged with _Angie's_ undercarriage and ran him out towards the nearest available launch tube. Before long he was subjected to the flash of rotating orange hazard lights. He braced himself for the sudden burst of g-force that pushed him back into his seat as his Bolt was belched into hard vacuum. His stomach, as it was wont to do, turned over for a few seconds as he traversed from the gravity well of his mother ship to the negligible gravity levels of near-system space.

He keyed the squadron vox channel open and spoke to his men.

'Gambit Wing, sound off!'

'Gambit two, check!'

'Gambit seven, I'm here!'

'Gambit three, launched and ready!'

'This is Gambit six, I've been grounded. Something wrong with my internal stabilisation systems.'

'Got you, Gambit six. Stand down.'

'Gambit five, awaiting orders.'

'Gambit four, check!'

'Alright, boys, form up on me and calibrate your re-entry vectors. Let's go kill us some aliens!'

The Navy was still fighting hard to prevent a second seeding ship from making orbit. They'd been unable, or unwilling, to break off from that fight long enough to deploy assault wings to support the ground troops. All they'd had down there were their Valkyrie gunships, little more than shuttles armed with pea-shooters compared to a Thunderbolt. Until now. The Perimedes had been ordered to break off and run in-system to offload several wings of Spades before running back to the blockade.

Trae had been given the auspicious responsibility of commanding one of the detachments that would help to establish air-superiority over the jungles of Gunga IV. Besides his own Gambit Wing, he'd been put in overall command of two more Thunderbolt Wings, another eleven birds flown by men he'd known and trusted for years. If they couldn't give the enemy hell, then the ground forces were just going to have to get along by themselves.

If the second seeding ship made orbit, they were all doomed anyway.

Lieutenant Commander Vossman P. Trae made the sign of the aquila over his breast and punched in the re-entry code. _Angie_ went into a long-burn dive that would punch them through Gunga's dense atmosphere and allow them to take the fight to the enemy.

xxx

The command bunker was little more than a rockrete box, dropped into place by the ever-ready Munitorum, some distance behind the front line. A metal ladder would allow personnel access to the roof for observation purposes or to repair the vox mast and auspex scanning equipment installed up there. Despite having several metres of reinforced rockrete between him and the enemy, Captain Grein didn't feel any safer in here that he had outside.

'Is the Major en route?'

'I presume so, sir,' replied the lieutenant, clad in the black and red uniform of a Tactical Corpsman.

Grein cursed. It was just as he'd always said. You couldn't put an ex-con in charge of a military outfit. Not only did it give him the means to work all kinds of mischief, but you could guarantee he wouldn't be there at the pivotal moment.

Well, he'd just have to lead the defence himself..

'I'm on gamma-pi-epsilon, keep me posted until the bastard shows up, will you? I'll be outside.'

He charged outside, his pistol and sabre in hand. His squad was waiting for him, congregated around the recessed entrance to the bunker.

'What's this, Captain? Since when do the Orrax stand at the rear and let other men do the dying?' Major Corgan was striding towards the front line already, calm-as-you-like with Wheln lugging his master-vox set alongside him.

'Where the hell have you been, Major?'

Corgan spun on his heel, a wry smirk spread across his unshaven countenance.

'Unlike you, my good Captain, I spent all yesterday up to my waist in alien filth. Might I ask, exactly how many hours sleep did _you_ get last night?'

Grein scowled.

'You look to be well rested, to me. Why don't you find your position on the lines and do some damn work for a change, mm?'

Corgan's tones were mild and condescending. Grein was an old-school ex-Arbites and he had always known the Major resented his disapproval over giving him the regiment. Corgan chose to show this resentment by humiliating Grein in front of his men, but Grein had earned his stripes on Fered Roathi alongside the rest of them, he was no soft-bellied uber-bully.

It was testament to his strength of character that he'd stayed on after the emancipation act that saw his men pardoned. Even greater testament to his usefulness was the fact that none of his men had seen fit to cap him yet. The look in Corgan's eyes, contrary to his mild exterior, spoke of his willingness to correct this oversight.

He threw a smart salute and hurried off to find his company on the line.

xxx

The plain had been green with long, verdant grasses, thriving in the rich soil vacated by trees that had subsisted there for millennia before the Imperium's arrival. The first half hour of the Pardus' response to the enemy saw that green felt ruptured and torn up. Alien biomass mingled with the native soil as hi-ex rounds sent fire sheeting up from the shallow crater's they set into in the landscape.

All the infantry could do during that time was wait. Commissars and warrior priests moved up the lines of the overlapping barricades, doing their best to bolster the Vandian troopers' morale in the face of such an overwhelming prospect as facing the oncoming hordes. Ironically, their effect of their efforts paled beside those rendered by the arrival of the Orrax Grenadiers.

The Vandian's had been assigned perimeter duty. All but two of their line companies were billeted on the environs of the town and these had quickly spilled from the barracks to man the barricades when the alarm went up. The Orrax, a much smaller regiment than the Vandians' at just under two thousand bodies, were billeted further into the town. Their response was no less efficient than that of their compatriots. They deployed in neat formation, fully armoured and with lascarbines prepped and ready.

They were inscrutable behind tinted visors and sealed respirator units, silent as the dead as they trotted purposefully into position amongst the Vandians. It was difficult not to be intimidated by their solid presence, but every one of them was heartily glad to have them on their side.

The feeling at the front went from pessimistic to ambivalent. A fatalistic confidence seemed to ooze from the Orrax and infect the men around them, despite the fact that not one of them uttered a word to their fellow guardsmen.

At the centre of the line Major Escabar Corgan picked his spot behind the very first barricade the enemy would have to contest. His armour was still smudged with the purple blood of the 'Nids he had slain the day before. The Vandian lieutenant saluted him and muttered some words of welcome.

Corgan nodded absent-mindedly. His thoughts had run back to Necromunda. He was remembering the smile of a woman he'd known back then. In a moment of uncharacteristic wistfulness he wondered if he'd ever see that smile again.

Then the depleted first waves of the Tyranids came within lasgun range and the crescendo of sound brought him back to Gunga IV with a thud. He felt like he'd been punched in the guts as the air around him thinned and crackled with static discharge. He could hardly breathe. The tang of bittersweet ozone clung to the back of his mouth.

In that moment of regret and reminiscence, he remembered what it was to fear death.


	10. The Tide

With his heart in his mouth Lieutenant Chulez operated his short-pattern lascarbine with mechanical precision. His years of training and experience were reduced, in those moments, to a numb, trigger-finger dependence in the face of such overwhelming odds.

His 'toon was clamouring around him in a near-panic state as the 'nid wave came within grenade distance. The crump of frag detonations accompanied the almost-encouraging sight of multiple explosions amidst the xenos lines.

Borer beetles of varying sizes buzzed overhead or splatted messily from the rockrete barricades. Chulez didn't turn to witness the passing of Corporal Ankhs as he was devoured from within. He didn't think his mind could take it. He'd already caught sight of several Vandians from Olaf's platoon reduced to acid-etched skeletons in a shower of green venom discharge. It was enough to send any sane man over the edge.

Chulez had four years of front-line experience in the Guard. He'd fought human insurgents in the civil-war-torn system of Denab and orks at Carst Olmay. He'd even gone toe to toe with loxatl mercenaries fighting for the heretical cult that had ravaged the city-states of Garganis Ultima two years ago. But nothing could compare to this. The loxatl had been bad, but on a far smaller scale than this madness.

The Guards were perilously close to having to contend with the 'nids at close range when a Catachan Hellhound arrived to cook the mass of smaller bio-forms and raze the lush grasslands with coruscating flames. Chulez sighed with relief at the moment's reprieve, but the Hellhound was moving up and down the line along with the rest of the tread-bound Catachans, using their vast experience in this kind of warfare in an attempt to hold back the tide. It moved on quickly and Chulez knew that it wouldn't stop this alien tide for much longer.

These were just the vanguard of the force, designed to force the Guardsmen into expending energy and resources while the slower bio-forms brought up the second wave. Chulez shuddered upon seeing the massive, lumbering Carnifexes moving up, accompanied by the taller forms of the Hive Tyrants.

'Heads up!' cried sergeant Preigus. Chulez looked up in time to see a cluster of globular projectiles arcing high over the smoking battlefield, trailing tentacles.

'Spore mines!' he elaborated. 'I want five marksmen watching the skies, don't let them make landfall, dammit!

The Vandian regiment was predominantly a scouting outfit. Organised along more traditional lines to the Catachans, they nevertheless fulfilled a similar kind of role when given the option. They employed less heavy weaponry and instead had a higher concentration of crack marksmen distributed between the platoons. These men and women had not had to employ their skills so far. With such a mass of oncoming Gaunts it had been like shooting fish in a barrel.

Now they put their skills to the test, picking many of the spore mines out of the sky before they could land. A few made it as far as the defences and exploded, showering men and vehicles with corrosive slime or blazing plasma, or tearing into them with bone-frag. But a great many were detonated harmlessly over the 'nid vanguard due to Chulez' quick thinking.

The other Vandian outfits followed his example as the bombardment intensified. After a few moments the sky was black with floating death and the Imperial counter-fire was a stellar light-show under-lighting the deadly cloud.

Meanwhile, the heavy weapons platoons of the Orrax Regiment started picking off any of the Carnifexes and Hive Tyrants they could draw a bead on. But it was clear to Chulez that it wasn't going to be enough.

The defence of Gurshun was going to be brief, bloody and ultimately pointless.

xxx

The first wave was almost upon them, the second wasn't far behind. The carapace armoured Orrax had fared better against the initial assault than the Vandian's, whose light armour was not enough to resist the borer beetles and venomous spines. The spore mines had taken more of a toll, those that had gotten through the Vandian's accurate sniper fire.

Corgan would have to remember to congratulate the man whose idea it was to shoot them out of the sky. He pulled Wheln down behind the barricade for a moment.

'Get those fly-boys on the horn and tell them we need immediate air support. You know the drill!'

'Got it!'

Corgan stood once more, drawing a bead with his rifle and bringing down another Gaunt. The ground beneath his feet trembled with the encroaching tide of the larger Tyranid species. The first and second waves were condensing into a single solid wall of xenos flesh. The Major watched as a massive, scythe-clawed behemoth less than a hundred metres out was dissected by some pin-point lascannon fire laid down by one of Biggs' well-drilled support squads. It was replaced by two more, driven by that inexplicable urge to rend and destroy whatever stood in their way.

Lasgun fire blew chunks from the chitinous carapace of the massive beasts, but all it did was irritate them. Corgan snapped a curt order to his men to concentrate all lasfire on the Guants and leave the bigger beasties to those with more of a kick to their kit.

The space between the opposing lines was shrinking alarmingly quickly.

Corgan put his rifle down on the lip of the barricade and drew his twinned hell-pistols. They were large, cumbersome weapons, wired into his shoulder-slung power-pack as they were, but they had more of a kick than standard las weapons. At the small of his back he carried two more weapons, one a bulky plasma pistol, the other a bolt pistol for which he carried two reloads. He didn't believe in going into a fight without fall-backs, but he was beginning to wonder whether it would be enough to see out the day.

As the depleted first wave closed with the Guard lines he leapt forward, borer beetles splatting on his carapace armoured chest or bouncing off. He landed in the middle of a morass of chittering alien creatures intent on bringing about his end no matter the sacrifice. Their unreasoning selflessness was something Corgan was all too familiar with. It was a state he had endured several times on Fered Roathi. It gave him the strength of will to fight down the fear that bored into his guts as surely as the living ammunition of his enemy might have done.

He fought like a whirlwind, never standing in one place for longer than a second, his las-rounds cooking their way through eye-sockets or exploding brain-pans, severing insect-limbs and puncturing exo-skeletal thoraces.

Without his armour he would have died a hundred times over during that furious melee. Without his loyal thugs backing him up he would have been overwhelmed and dragged beneath the carpet of bugs.

As his men moved up alongside him, punishing the Gaunts and Warriors with concentrated bursts of fire, Corgan felt the first blaze of pain since the beginning of the battle for Gunga IV. His shoulder felt like it was on fire. Looking down he saw that a borer beetle had lodged between breastplate and shoulder pad. The sensation of being eaten alive almost caused Corgan to scream.

He fought down the urge, dropping a pistol and taking hold of the beetle's protuberant abdomen before it could manage to squeeze its entire body between the plates and burrow itself deeper. He pulled hard. This time he was unable to resist the urge to cry out, roaring with unstinting rage as the pain flared through his chest and arm.

He had just enough presence of mind to look down at the creature, comparing it mentally to the diagrams he had seen in the Imperial archives. Confident that it was in tact and hadn't left any part of itself inside the wound, Corgan dropped the thing and crushed it beneath his heel. His body-glove had automatically tightened around the wound as it was designed to do when breached. This, in combination with a seepage of catalytic coagulants, served to slow the flow of blood and would eventually close the gash. It meant his left arm was slightly impeded, but at least he wasn't going to bleed out while he fought for his life.

And this he was required to do.

His men had rallied around him and were holding out against the first wave, but close on the heels of the Gaunts, the larger creatures were closing in.

A Carnifex, already missing two limbs and dragging a third behind it having been subjected to some desperate autocannon fire, charged through the crust of smaller creatures seeking to smash the Guardsmen aside in its reckless advance. Chunta melted its head with his meltagun and the squad scattered to either side as the massive body crashed to the ground. They quickly reformed beyond it as a Tyrant spotted them and turned its venom cannon towards them. Chunta and his high-powered weapon were reduced to a puddle of gore by the gout of xenos venom that caught him full on. Two others of Corgan's squad went down with serious burns, yowling in pain.

Eckman brought up the squad's rocket launcher without preamble and Ullis helped him put a krak round in the creature's thorax. Alien blood and pulped organs showered the lucky pair, but it was far from dead. The bonesword in one of its hands slashed out, removing Ullis' head and bisecting the rocket-tube in Eckman's hands as he tilted it for a reload. The specialist could only stare in disbelief at his luck while Corgan put a plasma-round in through the Tyrant's eye-socket. Finally, with an ear-splitting scream and a great deal of thrashing, the thing crashed down. Corgan swept up the reload that had rolled from Ullis' slack fingers and smacked it down on a rockrete barricade before sending it spiralling towards the creature. The rocket lodged between two twisted ribs and detonated, separating the Tyrant into three discernible pieces.

All around, the pressure slackened as the smaller xenos backed off, cowering in something akin to fear as the surviving Orrax went to it once more. Corgan nodded inwardly as he observed this section of the Tyranid line falter. The tacticians had gone to great lengths to explain popular theories on how the Tyranid war machine operated. They held that the average 'nid was basically fearless as long as certain creatures were present to maintain the hive consciousness. Without that synaptic link, they were aimless and discordant.

The trouble was that Tyrants, although fairly easy to identify, were very hard to take down. Even if this was achieved the Warrior variant, more numerous and harder to pick out amongst their smaller brethren, could also perform this role. There were other creatures that could do this and most of the larger ones could act in isolation anyway. Thus, the theory on how to beat the Tyranid was far from perfect.

Still, Corgan mused. It couldn't hurt to try it out. He activated his micro-bead, keying the command channel.

'Iactus, come in, over!'

'Argo this is Iactus,' came Biggs' reply. As commander of the ninth company he was in direct control of the heavy weapons platoons.

'Order your men to favour the Tyrant bio-forms. It may just give us the edge we need to hold them off.'

'Affirmative, Argo. Directing fire!'

Wheln looked up from his hand-held vox-readout and attracted Corgan's attention with a meaningful nod.

'Alright, boys, back to your positions. Air-support coming in!'

xxx

Darron paced the rearmost barricades like a caged animal. His veterans were being held in reserve under Captain Grampian. Ferio Company looked as keen as he was to get into the fight.

Things were looking desperate. The Guard lines were indistinguishable from the enemy's. Despite this, Bigg's heavy weapons teams were still pumping heavy fire out onto the plain. The mortar teams, less then ten metres ahead of Darron's position, had stripped down to their vests and were lathered with sweat, such were their exertions.

Still the word didn't come.

A roaring overhead momentarily drowned out the din of war. A squadron of six Thunderbolts screamed overhead, heavy with napalm canisters slung under their wings. The powerful craft went into lateral thrust and shot out over the plain, breaking formation to spread the pain.

Darron whooped and hollored with joy along with the rest of his men as the flame was consumed in flaming jelly. The scent of cooked alien wafted across the township and Darron remembered the old saying, the origins of which had been lost in the mists of time.

Shopal looked over at him with a grin. They didn't need to say it. Each knew what the other was thinking. As the jets doubled back to re-stock, the soldiers of Orrax started to feel as if they might just pull through this in one piece.

Then the ground started to vibrate. It wasn't the vibration caused by the Leman Russ battle-tanks unloading their deadly cargo. This was a constant, rising palpitation of the ground beneath their feet. Darron looked to Shopal querulously, receiving a shrug for his reply.

'Saddle up, boys. We might still get a look in today. I want everyone ready to…'

The road erupted ahead of them, obscuring their marshal vista with a shower of dirt and rubble and something much, much worse.

At first glance it resembled a scale-up version of the warrior form, but it was more like a serpent with it's long, sinuous body. It had the prerequisite six legs in the form of scything talons and all up its sinuous length smaller claw-like appendages that allowed it to traverse the tunnels it wrought. The name refused to come for a moment as Darron recovered from his initial shock. Then it dawned on him.

Trygon!

He knew what was going to happen next almost as though he had experienced a moment of prescience. The gaping hole overflowed with a chittering horde of Hormagaunts and Raveners. Darron hesitated no longer.

'Give 'em some hurt, brothers!'

Ferio Company was a fraction of a second behind the veterans of Darron and Shopal's squads. A wall of red lasfire rippled out and tore chunks out of the newly emerged critters. They milled for a second, the Trygon hadn't expected to find enemies on both sides so soon. It had been directed here to strike the Imperial battle-line in the rear. But it didn't quibble. The raveners fanned out rapidly, dispersing into the built up areas to engage in guerrilla warfare while the Gaunts threw themselves at Ferio company en masse.

The mortar teams had scattered, abandoning their machines, but many of them didn't make it far before being torn to shreds by the malevolent xenos spilling from the ground. Two nearby Leman Russ battle tanks traversed their turrets to try and bring down the Trygon but it was too quick, scuttling between two buildings and into the town even as the screen of Gaunts was torn to shreds by Grampion's men.

'Aw, crud!' Darron swore. 'Shopal, what's your opinion on 'nid burgers?'

'Never tried 'em, mate, sounds tasty!'

'Help me hunt that thing down and we can find out…'

'How could I say no…' came Shopal's sarcastic reply. Darron turned to his vox man.

'Get Grampion on the vox and tell him we'll deal with the pest problem if he can try and plug that hole. Oh, and try and scare us up some air cover. It'll be much easier tracking that thing from the air.'

The two veteran teams broke cover and chased after the scuttling behemoth, mowing down a screen of Hormagaunts as they went. Ferio Company moved up, laying down concentrated volleys of lasgun fire in an attempt to stem the surging tide threatening to outflank their faltering front line.


	11. Behind the Lines

_A/n - so, no updates in a while but hopefully this chapter will whet your appetites and mine. Been working my way through a bit of a block but hopefully I'm on the road to recovery. Enjoy!

* * *

Lita gnashed her teeth in frustration. While the Orrax regiment was outside dying to defend the colony, here she was lumbered with guard duty. She paced the antechamber like a caged animal, trying in vain to make out what was being said in the room beyond the door. Vaughn had told her to prevent all disturbances while the doctor performed his examination, but the hab-block was deserted apart from Lita and her squad. It was a pointless exercise._

And who joined the Imperial Guard to guard stuff, anyway?

Pars trotted around the corner and into the room, his insolent grin and roguish saunter momentarily absent, replaced with a look of urgency.

'Sarge, we've got 'nids inside the city limits… proper 'nids! Darron's calling for aerial cover and we're the only people left in Gurshun with wings.'

'What? Where are the other Valkyries?'

'They transferred up to the Pelligus zone to help with the evac this morning!'

'Right, get the lads ready to move. I'll clear it with the black-top!'

Disturbances or no, this was life or death. She opened the door a crack and got Vaughn's attention. He stepped through into the anteroom with irritation clear in his posture.

'Sir, things have really gone to spit out there. We've got 'nids running riot through the city and Darron's having trouble keeping them contained.'

'What can you do about it, sergeant?'

'I want your permission to take the Valkyrie up to provide aerial cover. They need a spotter to get the situation under control.'

Vaughn nodded curtly.

'Very well, sergeant, permission granted. Send one of your men back to guard this door and then you're free to do what you can.'

'Yes sir.'

The courtyard was vibrating with engine noise when she got there, the Valkyrie prepped and ready to lift. Lita caught up with Pars just in time to see him and one of the others hoisting a metal barrel up the cargo-ramp.

'What's this?'

'Napalm, boss. Thought it might come in handy,' Pars replied with a grin. Lita rolled her eyes and shook her head.

'Does the pilot know you're loading his bird with large amounts of volatile inflammable jelly?'

'Err… well, we, err… thought he might have, err… you know, like, err… _feelings_ on the matter… so we, err… kind of didn't tell him, like.'

'Get it on board quickly, then. We need to get in the air.'

xxx

Grampion had almost managed to stem the tides pouring up out of the hole. Several broods had managed to escape the cordon and he could only pray that Corgan was able to cope with them. He dreaded to think what might happen if there were more than one of those tunnelling things.

'Sir!' cried Harris, his vox man. 'I've got the first sergeant on the horn…'

Grampion grabbed the vox-horn.

'This is Grampion!'

'We're incoming on your position, Captain,' came Kierst's reply. 'Darron apprised me of you situation. I think I may have a solution…'

'We'll take whatever you've got, sergeant.'

'Then I'd advise you to get your men into cover, sir!'

xxx

Lita pulled the hatch down in the compartment wall, giving her a view of the cockpit controls and the pilot crew. By his pips she could tell that the Valkyrie commander was a lieutenant. He outranked her in the air, but this was a Guard matter.

'Afternoon, boys. I've got an unusual request for you.'

'Fire away, sergeant.'

'I was wondering if you wouldn't mind putting us directly over that great big hole in the ground over there and opening the rear hatch.'

'You're not going in there, surely…'

Lita hesitated to reply, wondering how best to phrase her confession.

'Not exactly,' she started. 'Just be ready to apply some forward thrust when I bang on the partition… there may be some backwash from the explosion we intend to set off!'

'What the hell have you brought onto my bird, sergeant?'

The pilot obviously wasn't stupid. He'd probably been ferrying Guard about his entire career, likely he had a thousand stories detailing the kind of stunts they'd pulled. She hoped this one made it into his repertoire, even if it wasn't entirely her idea.

'Just do it, fly-boy, my friends are dying down there…'

She closed the hatch and moved to the side hatch while Pars and the others got the canister ready and braced themselves for the opening of the rear hatch.

'Hold on to it until I give the word,' she shouted. 'Do not let go of it too soon, for all our sakes!'

Pars just grinned even wider, he was relishing this.

xxx

Grampion watched as the Valkyrie hoved into position directly above the hole. The rear hatch cranked open even as the last of his men were diving into cover. The 'nids were starting to swarm around the lip of the hole, ignoring the occasional volley of covering fire coming from the more gung-ho members of his outfit.

'Whatever you're going to do, sergeant, you better do it now!' he growled.

His words were like prophecy. A metal canister rolled off the ramp and dropped like a bomb into the gaping maw of the Tyranid borehole. There was a moment of silent anticipation that seemed to stretch into eternity, the Valkyrie started to pull forward away from the hole, almost in slow motion. Then the hole erupted like an angry volcano. Flaming rubble and alien biomass fountained upward. The blast wave put Grampion on his buttocks, his eye-brows were singed by the heat-wash.

'Was that prom?' he asked, nerveless with surprise.

'Naw, Cap, that was napalm, sure as sure!' Harris whooped, ecstatic.

'Throne!' Grampion swore, trying to gather his wits. 'Alright, get the boys formed up. I want Haines and Gorne or cleanup duty. The rest of us are moving up to support the front line.'

Ferio Company quelled their boyish excitement and started hustling. Two platoons settled back to guard the hole and track down any bugs that had slipped the cordon while the other three buckled up and headed out.

With any luck, some of them would live to see the sunset.

xxx

'It comes!' Hestor Luek screamed, making Vaughn and the little medicae jump. They were the first coherent words to come from the man's lips since they'd brought him in. Vaughn grabbed the man's shoulder while the medicae moved to the other side. Together they tried to quell the man's thrashing.

'What comes?' Vaughn replied.

'The devourer… the great devourer comes!'

The fanaticism in the man's words did not bode well. The parasite attached to his medulla oblongata was exerting its control. The man's resistance was being steadily eroded and there hadn't been a damn thing Vaughn and the medicae could do about it.

'We know that, you fool. We need to know about the cult… tell us about the cult!'

The man's struggling subsided somewhat, his eyes narrowing.

'A cancer festering at the heart of the colony…' he whispered. 'I thought it was a sub-cult of the Imperial Creed. They tricked me and now look what I have become…'

The man's skin was turning blue. The blotchiness radiated out from where the parasite punctured his skin and had reached the man's jawline. His irises were yellow, the whites of his eyes jaundiced. He was being changed at the cellular level, mutated into one of those half-human things they'd fought to recover him from.

There was no future for Hestor Luek that did not involve death. The only question was whether it would be quick and painless, a bolter round to the temple, or slow and agonising. The change would not kill him, it would paralyse him with pain but it would not kill him. And then when the hive rolled over Gurshun he would surrender to the devourer and his biomass would be just so much fuel for the machine.

But he had resisted. He had tried to continue in his service to the Emperor. His faith had been so strong that even the alien hormones flooding his system could not wrest complete control from his inner psyche. He could potentially save them all, but they were losing him.

'I need to know how I can track them down, man. Give me something I can use…'

Hestor screamed again as the thing in the back of his head squirmed, pushing its intrusive proboscis deeper into his brain. Sweat laced with blood beaded on his forehead and his thrashing intensified for a few brief moments.

There was almost no mass on the man. It was obvious that he was severely malnourished and his strength had been sapped by his exertions. He was fading fast, even the brain-leech could not sustain him for much longer.

A moment of clarity seemed to wash the pain from his features but only for a moment. He gasped his final words almost too low to be audible. Vaughn lowered his head to catch all that he could.

'…the church… they recruited me there… man called… Fabian… he is theeaaargh!'

Hestor Luek was gone, an alien sentience, with a desperate flush of lethal hormones had taken full control of his faculties and bit down hard on Vaughn's ear, crunching through the cartilage.

Vaughn cried out, pulling away hard and leaving the bloodied rags of half his pinna in Luek's mouth. The medicae was shoved away, not strong enough to hold the possessed man on his own. He struck his head on the wall and fell unconscious as Luek surged to his feet and launched himself at Vaughn, who had to let go of the bloodied stump of his ear to clamp both hands around Luek's throat.

The man's strength was inhuman, but his co-ordination was poor. Vaughn suffered several cuts and gashes to his face and neck as the man thrashed, but thirty seconds of strangulation was enough to ride out the artificial rush of adrenaline that had kept Luek's corpse alive.

Hestor Luek's end was better than it might have been, and Vaughn had a lead. All in all a fairly successful day, despite everything that had gone wrong. Now all he had to do was hope that he would get the opportunity to follow it up. If the defence faltered, it wouldn't matter anyway.

xxx

The Trygon was fast for something so big. From above it resembled a sidewinder snake, undulating through the narrow byways of Gurshun. Lita watched as Darron's squad came at it from the side, irritating it with their hellgun fire and scoring its thick hide with their melta weapons.

It was heavily heat resistant, probably because of the amount of friction it would create when boring its tunnels, as a result, they were struggling to hurt it significantly enough to slow it down even with their heaviest weapons.

Already it had rendered three hab-blocks unstable with its violent passage and it was getting perilously close to the fuel dump that was keeping the Pardus manoeuvrable. If it got that far, the defence would be made a hell of a lot more difficult and any thoughts of a counter-attack would be in jeopardy.

Their only hope lay in the imminent support of two of the Pardus hunter-killers, but they'd have to get their treads moving if they were going to arrive in time. Pars and Rhys were manning the heavy stubbers, unloading streams of high calibre rounds onto the thing from above. It hardly even caused an itch for all she could tell.

'Where the hell are those big guns,' she griped.

Quaig took it as an order and put out a call, receiving a garbled reply back.

'They've been delayed,' he said. 'One of Grampion's squads were hunting stragglers in the area they're coming in by when they walked into an ambush. There's a running fire fight and they're wary of advancing through the area without infantry support.'

'Why would they be afraid of civilian insurgents? They can't possibly be well enough equipped to take out a tank!'

Quaig shook his head.

'Apparently some of the Pardus tanks have been sabotaged throughout the morning. Civilians with survey charges have been knocking out turret tracking servos and treads. They won't risk their rides without some infantry watching their backs.'

'And Grampion's men are too busy, I take it?'

'I'd say so. Apparently they got hit pretty hard.'

'Alright, get Shopal on the line and give him the Pardus' current location. We need those big guns and we need them asap!'

She turned back to the open hatch and looked down at the beast. It had turned on Darron's men and forced them to scatter. One of them was skewered on the creatures scything talons before he could get clear, his body fell in two pieces and the Trygon continued on its inexplicable journey through the suburbs of Gurshun.

xxx

Shopal followed Antillus' directions to cut through a narrow alleyway that should deposit them onto the Via Cantaro, three blocks from the Pardus hunter-killers and two from whatever disturbance remained.

Antillus roved ahead, checking every nook in the alleyway that could possibly conceal a rogue 'nid. Two metres behind him Shopal trotted shoulder-to-shoulder with Farls, the other six members of his squad brought up the rear.

They were making good time as they emerged onto what they thoughts was the Via Cantaro, but Antillus stopped short in the middle of the road.

'What's the problem?' Shopal hissed.

'Er, I think we're lost…'

'Define lost!'

'This isn't Cantaro. We should be able to see the Kalliko Merchant House from here but all I see are habs and more habs…'

'Are we even going in the right direction? You do have a compass…'

'Yeah but it's useless in here,' Antillus complained, giving his auspex a shake. 'We're surrounded by magnetic structural supports that are confusing the compass.'

Shopal cocked his head to one side and turned to pick up the sounds of warfare and get his bearings..

'Okay, so the battle is over that way… and we came from over that way… meaning we continue in this direction until we hear shooting or spot the tanks. And gimme the damn auspex before you break it!'

Shopal was in the middle of a major sense-of-humour breakdown. It was bad enough that they'd been held in reserve to start with. At least the Trygon had given them something to do. Now he was lumbered with babysitting a couple of soft-bellied Tanker boys and then only if he could find the frakkers first. Antillus was in more trouble than he knew but he'd save the "reprimands" for later.

The squad moved on.

xxx

The hab block was deathly still. The only sounds were those made by the two men as they rolled Hestor Luek into his body-bag and lifted him to the gurney. The wheels squealed and spun as Medicae Vasser rolled it out of the room, heading for the elevator that would take him down to the basement level they were using as a makeshift morgue after the bombing of the hospital.

Vaughn stayed behind, muttering in low tones with the trooper who'd been guarding the door. Vasser felt a stirring of fear in his guts as he realised he'd be venturing into the basement alone.

It wasn't the bodies that scared him, not even that of the mutant. He was inured to death after a decade of ministering to the Imperial Guard in war zones across the segmentum. No, it wsn't the bodies.

The things he'd seen today had rocked the foundations of his faith. That a man such as Hestor Luek, a devout and steadfast man, could be reduced to such a bloodthirsty freak did not sit well with Vasser. It was not death that frightened Medicae Vasser, but that which came after death. If Hestor Luek could find damnation despite everything, then the same could just as easily happen to Vasser himself.

He fingered the silver Aquila pendant at his throat and began to mutter the litanies of Faith under his breath as he rode the elevator down into sub-level three. It gave him little comfort, but a modicum of courage.

He wheeled the gurney out into the dimly lit corridor. Tube-lighting flickered a way down and beyond it was only darkness.

'Damn!' Vasser swore, quietly. The room he needed was beyond the flickering light. Reaching into his satchel he took out a small torch used for testing pupil dilation. It wasn't enough to give Vasser any comfort, but he'd be able to find the right door, at least.

With a sense of enormous foreboding, the Medicae ventured into the shadows, the squealing of the gurney's wheels echoing from the cold hard walls of the corridor.

He found the right door and propped it open, wheeling the gurney into the frigid basement room and hastily backing towards the door, casting about with his pathetically inadequate torch. The hairs had lifted on the back of his neck and his skin crawled. Some of this could be attributed to the low temperature, but the shiver that ran up his spine was raw, primal fear.

A sound broke the near-silence. A sucking sound, followed by the cracking of bones, a sound Vasser was well used to, but not in such eerie surroundings.

'Who's there,' he called, his voice ringing from the undressed walls and ceiling of the broad room.

A skittering sound off to his right caused him to wheel about. Another, deeper in the room brought him about again. He backed towards the dim outline of the open door, his torch casting demonic shadows and catching the dust motes but doing little more than that.

'Probably just rats,' Vasser muttered to himself, but he wasn't convinced.

As he reached the doorway, the skittering became frantic, coming rapidly closer and getting louder. Vasser bolted, running for his life from Emperor knew what kind of horror. Bogey men from his distant childhood took a death-grip on his imagination and the terror clamped around his chest like bands of iron. The skittering pursuit continued to gain ground.

He reached the lighted hallway and turned to see what it was that was chasing him. He instantly wished that he had not.

The elevator door beckoned to him and he dived into the car, punching buttons frantically. They began to slide shut, too slow, too damn slow to stop the clawed freak with its gaping maw lined with needle-like teeth.

It pounced, hampered not at all by the closing doors, and landed on top of the catatonic Vasser, who couldn't even summon up a scream as the Ravener tore his belly open and clamped its jaw around his shoulder. Its talons entered his body, puncturing lungs and liver and tearing his left kidney free of his body. Ribs cracked and his collarbone gave way with a splintering snap.

Pain flooded Vasser's fading consciousness even as his blood sprayed the walls and flooded the floor. They thrashed together in a heap of human and alien flesh, the creature wrapping him in a deathly embrace as it coiled about his spasmodic form.

He passed out before the end, the Emperor's last mercy to a man that had after all been allowed to keep his faith to the end of his days. Three floors up, the elevator reached its first stop and the bell pinged as the doors slid open.

With eyes that burned like the fires of purgatory, the Ravener turned from it victim and slithered out into the brightly lit corridor, leaving a trail of blood in its wake.


	12. Tightrope

Things were getting desperate. The Vandians were on the verge of breaking. Only the selfless leadership of their officer cadre was keeping them in place, with perhaps a little influence being exerted by the grim-faced Orrax. The white-armoured Guardsmen fought like hellions. Cerberus wasn't the most disciplined of the Orrax companies, but their lust for survival was backed up by an ability to deal out violence in abundance.

The bearded form of Captain Arines led from the fore, bellowing out curses upon whatever mother had spawned the xenos filth. He could barely be heard over the din of violence, the crump of mortar detonations, the loud shushing of lascannon discharge and the thunderous roar of Leman Russ Battle Cannons. But the men of Cerberus took heart from his fearlessness in the face of such overwhelming odds.

But the Vandians didn't know Arines. They didn't identify with his brash, forthright attitude, and their own leaders were generally of the quieter variety. When Rakjak arrived at the front he could barely take it all in.

The killing ground was ablaze. The grassy plain had been reduced to a charred and pitted landscape, alight with blazing napalm fires, billowing stinking, acrid smoke that created a premature twilight. Explosions punctuated the vista, massive battle-cannon shells impacting across the field, sending xenos showering away in pieces and trailing fire. The heavy weapons teams ensconced on the rooftops of the peripheral buildings held the larger monstrosities at bay but only barely. The Guardsmen had abandoned their foremost positions, concentrating their frontage and thus their return fire across a smaller front.

For as far as he could see to north and south, the enemy spilled across the surface of Gunga IV, a living carpet of malevolent intent.

Lieutenant Chulez trotted up to Rakjak's Chimera, although he was barely recognisable under the patina of blood and grime that coated him from tip to toe.

'What are you waiting for, sergeant? Stand to and deploy. We need you fighting not gawping…'

'Yes, sir, where do you want us?'

'Over to the left, you can have Sergeant Boyden's unit since he's bought the farm.'

Boyden dead? Rakjak could hardly believe that. The man had been like a rock, impervious to anything the enemies of the Imperium could throw at him. If Boyden was really gone, then they were royally screwed.

Rakjak rolled his men into position. The Chimera added its multi-laser and heavy bolter fire to the fusillade.

'Stay here,' Rakjak shouted to the driver, 'I've a feeling your services will be required again soon, understood?'

The man nodded his head numbly.

'And it might be helpful if you were to man that storm bolter up top,' Rakjak concluded before dismounting and leading his men into position.

Boyden's unit was flayed to the bone. Four desperate men remained, the core of Three Platoon and some of the hardest men of the regiment. They welcomed Rakjak and his men with the slack expressions of relief mingled with exhaustion.

Rakjak didn't speak, he simply added his lasgun to the weight of fire his squad was putting out and accepted his lot. What would be would be.

xxx

Wheln gripped Corgan's elbow to get his attention. The 'Nids had been driven back from their position somewhat, but the pressure was still on. Frocar had planted the regimental standard and Daedalus Company had taken fresh heart from the sight of it, glinting in the orange glow of myriad fires.

'I've got Sidellus on the horn, he wants to speak to you…'

Corgan grabbed the hi-gain and put it to his ear.

'Sidellus, this is Argo One, go ahead.'

'Argo One, this is Pardus Prime, request permission to bring up the reserve squadrons for a counter attack.'

'What's the plan, Colonel?'

'I have nine Exterminator pattern tanks waiting in the northern suburb. We'll engage the enemy at speed, sweeping down from the north. The tanks that are already entrenched along the defensive line will guard our flanks and rear and we'll need infantry support to deal with any targets we have trouble with.'

'Namely?'

'Carnifexes are a problem, sir, we can deal with anything else but if they get too close we'll be in trouble.'

'Sounds a risky strategy to me, Colonel…'

'War's a risky business. If we don't do something soon the infantry will break down and it won't matter how much armour we have. This is the perfect opportunity, we can't afford to miss it.'

'Very well, Sidellus. I have another air-strike coming down in three minutes, consider that your green light. Tell your tank boys to watch their cross-fire and we'll watch ours. Infantry support will move out to consolidate your gains.'

'The Emperor Protects!'

Corgan hung up the horn.

'Maybe he does and maybe he doesn't,' Corgan muttered to himself. He turned to Wheln.

'The motor pool's on standby, yes?'

'Sir!'

'Get them up here. We'll retake our forward positions but I want those transports on station in case it goes to hell.'

xxx

Shopal's squad walked right into the middle of a firefight. He got his men to cover and quickly tried to asses the situation.

They were in a low-end part of down, the habs were run-down and the workshops heaped with rusting piles of junk. The dilapidated buildings crowded into too little space, creating a network of narrow byways. The buildings could be used just as easily as the junctions to access different areas, meaning that an enemy that knew the terrain could outflank them as easily as breathing.

Shopal personally took down a pair of terrifyingly mutated insurgents, lasfire tearing into their unarmoured bodies as easily as if they were human. Antillus and Choffre blasted another simultaneously, sending his broken form tumbling from the high window to street below. He bounced once and was still.

Okar went down, his left leg taken out from under him by the percussive force of an autorifle round. He scrambled into cover only to expose himself to another cultist emerging from a basement stairway behind them. Bullets smashed into his breastplate at close range sending ceramite shards flying. He was lucky that none went through and he was able to respond more effectively, exploded the cultists head with his hellgun.

'This is worse than Five Rivers,' Shopal cursed. Angior looked at him in perturbation. None of his section had been with Corgan during the covert operations in the Delta. Their only experience of city fighting came from the mass engagements that had followed. They'd always had someone watching their hind-side. Now they knew what it was like to have to watch every angle at once.

The cultists were all around them, working in teams of two or three. The Orrax troopers of Ferio Company were scattered and directionless, their chain of command broken down and confusion setting in. Shopal hadn't seen any of them for several minutes, but they could hear gunfire and shouting. They were out there somewhere.

The question was, where the hell were the damned tanks. He needed to link up with the Ferio boys to see if they had any idea, but even then it was a long shot.

'Does anyone know where the frak we are?' Shopal enquired in a momentary lull and with a strong note of irony in his voice. A round of shrugs and grunts were his only reply.

Okar rose to his feet, trying out his battered leg to see if he could still walk. Antillus and Choffre kept their eyes on the façade of the building they'd been attacked from. Orpio ignored him too, using the pilot light of his flamer to light a lho stick, oblivious to their situation.

'Fine lot of help you lot are,' Shopal griped. 'Alright. We advance by twos in a five metre spread. One man watches the pair in front, the other keeps tabs on the rear. Got it?'

The men of his unit nodded, uninspired.

'Anyone who gets lost is on his own, so don't get frakking lost, okay?'

_Bunch of numb nuts! _He though to himself as he turned to get his bearings.

'Antillus, I want you on my ass. Let's move out!'

He dashed across the narrow back street, checking shadowy windows and doors as he went. Selecting a door at random he kicked it open and dived through into cover behind a pile of broken furniture. Seeing the room was clear he continued through an internal doorway and through a lounge room long abandoned. Another door brought him out into a corridor lined with similar doors to other apartments.

'Watch my back, Antillus,' he hissed as he advanced cautiously down the hall.

Half way down a door open and a civilian staggered out into the hallway, screaming incoherently. It was all Shopal could do to stop himself gunning her down as she hared off out of sight. The room she had run from was clear. He moved to the window, keeping low, and caught a fleeting glimpse of a man darting around a corner.

Presumably she'd caught sight of him as he moved down the street and as he definitely wasn't wearing the white carapace armour of the Orrax he assumed it was one of the insurgents.

The apartment had an external exit that gave out onto the street. He opted to go in the opposite direction to that in which the insurgent had gone. He was either running away from something or towards something, it was fifty-fifty as to which it would be. Shopal would as soon not get himself tangled up in another fire-fight.

He moved cautiously up the street in what he guessed was a north-easterly direction. The sound of gunfire cracked and chattered all around them, echoing from the close confines and making it impossible to make out what direction it was coming from.

Emerging into a marginally more open space at the confluence of three roads he selected a more easterly direction. There was movement up ahead. He ducked into a doorway on one side of the street while Antillus ducked behind a large trash container unit. Five metres behind them, Orpio and Choffre followed suit.

Shopal watched for a few moments, trying to make out what it was he was seeing. A sudden scream, accompanied by a spray of blood, put an end to his uncertainty.

'Bugs!' he cried, levelling his hellgun and letting rip. The half-seen form melted into the shadows as he closed the distance, Antillus on his heels, Orpio and Choffre closing up behind them.

They found the corpse of a civilian, torn to pieces, but there was alien ichor spattering the walls as well, betraying the fact that Shopal had hit something. A trail of the stuff led into a narrow rust-hole in the side of an iron machine shed.

Shopal gestured the rest of the squad in and they regrouped.

He found himself in a quandary. Stringing the squad out was only effective against the cultists, preventing them from getting the drop on the rest of the unit. But the 'nids posed a different threat. Shopal had heard that some of them were near invisible, perhaps that was why he hadn't got a clear look at whatever did this. If there were 'nids in the area, he wanted the squad in tight formation.

He was getting mightily sick of having to make such tactical decisions and inwardly cursed his sergeant's stripes. He refused to lose face in front of his men here and now, but as soon as he got the opportunity he was going to request a demotion.

The decision was taken out of his hands. The sound of breaking glass filled their ears as Tyranids exploded from the windows behind them, rapidly flooding the street with hate-filled alien biomass.

'Back up,' Shopal cried. 'Orpio, fry those sons of bitches.'

The squad backed away, lighting up the street with their lasfire. Orpio levelled his bulky flamer, cool as a Valhallan, and adjusted the nozzle to optimise the spread. Burning prom stained the air with its acrid stench and the high-pitched squeals of flaming bugs filled their ears.

Shopal led the retreat, sharp as ever for new threats. The squad spilled out into a broad concourse and he cast about for some suitable cover, settling on a stowage of packing crates piled up on the raised porch of a customs warehouse. Leaping to the platform he hastily toppled a tower of crates to create a defensible barricade.

'Get in,' he bellowed, snapping of a few shots at the 'nids emerging from the burning back lane. 'Where's Ekrin?'

'He bought it, bastards ran him down,' Antillus replied, joining Shopal at the barricade.

Orpio was last to dive behind the crates, the street ablaze behind him. Promethium pooled in the rutted lane but it hadn't stopped the 'nids. They were larger than gaunts and serpentine with broad cranial carapaces and rows of needle-sharp teeth. And they were fast.

Lasfire whipped out at them, forcing them back, killing one and wounding another. But the squad was pinned and sooner or later the bugs would find a way to outflank them.

'We can't stay here,' Antillus griped.

'I know, as soon as you get any bright ideas let me know…' Shopal replied with venom. This day was going from bad to worse.

xxx

The field erupted in flame once more as the Thunderbolt wing roared overhead, dropping their third payload of the day and heading back to the landing field in the west. The signal given, Colonel Sidellus waved his reserve squadron forward. He had joined them himself to lead the charge of the Red Brigade.

His Executioner pattern Leman Russ, dubbed the Fire of Retribution, revved up, her treads fighting for traction for a moment on the smooth rockrete hardpan. Nine Exterminators followed him, two of them had been subject to field repairs after acts of sabotage that very morning, but they were fighting fit now, their twin-linked autocannons traversing smoothly to shower red kisses upon the enemy.

Comissar Targoth would follow in his standard pattern Russ, watching that the surge did not falter. In fifteen years they had not. The Pardus spear was famed for its effectiveness. He'd been itching to employ it here, but part of the reason it was so useful was in the timing.

The infantry and entrenched vehicles had taken a heavy toll on the enemy, they had held the line but only barely. They had given ground and stood on the brink of all out retreat. The enemy, mindless in their sustained assault, sensed the nearness of victory and pressed home recklessly. The time was ripe for Sidellus to save the day. And if he did not, at least he would die a hero.

The xenos tide broke to either side of the armoured echelon like breakers from the bow of a ship. Autocannon and bolter fire lanced out, ripping into the massed aliens. Hull-mounted lascannons sliced into the larger Tyranids, bisecting Carnifexes and Hive Tyrants. The defensive line's fusillade fell away as the alien's advance faltered and folded in on itself. The Red Brigade ploughed through the low-lying smog bringing fire and retribution to the enemy.

Sidellus mounted the turret, manning the pintle storm bolter and baying with primal glee. The xenos crumbled before him, torn asunder and strewn across the battlefield in pieces.

It was his crowning moment, the moment of his greatest glory.

xxx

The order given, Corgan's and nearly fifty more white-clad Chimeras revved up and ploughed forward. Argo Company had been divided up among the fighting Companies to bolster them during the defence. Now they pressed home the counter attack, mounted up in their armoured transports, modified versions of the vehicles they'd used to assault Pelloris Ridge.

Multilaser and heavy bolter fire tore into the beleaguered bugs, heavy flamers reduced them to crisp skeletal husks. The hull-mounted lasguns were used to pick off any that managed to evade the crushing tracks as they churned forward and the fighting companies march in behind them.

Up in their raised gun nests the lascannon teams worked furiously to pick out the larger xeno forms that posed a threat to the tankers. Even so, they couldn't eliminate them all. Many of the Warrior forms carried weapons capable of burning through tank armour. Argo troopers spilled from ruptured hulls to continue on foot. Others were caught in fuel-tank detonations that slew Guardsmen and Tyranids alike.

The battle of Gurshun became even more up close and personal, if that was even possible.

As the Chimeras reached the foremost barricades they sloughed to a halt. The veteran troopers disgorged, taking up new positions at the barricades and catching hundreds of gaunts and other bugs in between the two fighting lines. These were cut apart in the crossfire.

Sidellus' tanks continued to churn their way southward, slicing the heart out of the Tyranid horde. Corgan watched as they drew level with his position, surrounded by blazing flak and wreathed in napalm smog.

He watched as a massive xenos form rose from its prone position, scything talons open wide in a deadly embrace. Sidellus' tank lanced out with its lascannon, slicing a chunk from the creature but missing with its turret-mounted plasmacannon. Then the tank slammed home. The creature's talons pierced the tank in three places. The starboard track assembly ruptured and massive links flew apart. Sidellus himself, standing in the turret cupola, was sent flying out of the turret as the tank ground to a halt.

The carnifex was slain by the impact but the Fire of Retribution was going nowhere. The Red Brigade broke formation to avoid a pile up and suddenly the spear had shivered to splinters and they desperately tried to corral the wounded Executioner.

The Tyranids hit back.

Gaunts swarmed over the Exterminators, tearing at the hatches and firing weapons into the narrow view-ports. One of the tanks came to a full stop and the hatch popped open. Corgan watched in numb disbelief as a crewman fought desperately to escape, his features under-lit by an internal fire. The Russ exploded before he could get clear.

Corgan gathered his wits about him. He'd known this was a desperate venture, now it was time to pull his irons out of the fire.

'Argo Company, forward!'

The faltering tide of Tyranid warriors was met toe to toe by the white armoured roughnecks and cut-throats of Orrax's toughest unit. They cleared the twenty metre stretch between their newly reclaimed barricades and the milling tanks in less than a minute and before long were in amongst the grumbling offspring of the mechanicum's forges.

Overhead the covering fire provided by the heavy weapons teams intensified, churning the ground to steaming mud all around them. The noise was deafening, the screams melding with the staccato snap-crack of lasguns and the barking of heavy bolter detonations.

Corgan killed seven Gaunts in four seconds with his twinned hellpistols as he closed on Sidellus' last known location. Frocar and Perri moved up an either side of him, laying down disciplined volleys of lasfire. The rest of his squad moved in amongst the tanks, peeling the gaunts off the armoured hulls.

The colonel was lying on his back in the bottom of a shell-hole, caked in mud and bleeding from a laceration to the scalp. He'd drawn his bolt pistol and was picking off any gaunts that got too close. Fortunately for him, he wasn't their primary target.

Corgan helped the man to his feet, wincing as his wounded shoulder protested.

'Well met, Major,' Sidellus cried.

'For you, certainly,' Corgan replied acerbically. Sidellus only grinned, adrenaline clouding his reason.

'Have we tipped the balance,' the Colonel asked as he chased the Orrax back into cover amongst the tanks.

Corgan fixed him with his coldest regard.

'Not even close…'

He glared out at the none-too-distant tree line. It had retreated several metres, brush and undergrowth having been torn and flattened by the passage of hundreds of thousands of Tyranids. They still hadn't finished disgorging onto the plain. The jungle must be thick with them. Corgan wondered if they would ever stop or if they would just keep coming until one side or the other became extinct.

He found himself wishing he'd cut his losses back on Fered Roathi. Authority had gone to his head. Now he was reaping the rewards.

_Well,_ he thought, hefting the heavy pistols and trying to ignore the numbness in his shoulder. _I'm sure as hell gonna take a damn sight more of them with me before the end!_


	13. Killing Rain

Commander Julians sat in his command harness and sweated. The interior of the armoured Hunter Killer was closer and more humid than the deepest jungle interior known to the Catachans. But you got used to that when you were a career tanker like Jared Julians.

'Any sign yet?' he asked. The vox operator, Gantse, shook his head. 'Well, I'm damned if I'm going through there without infantry support, that I can tell you,' Julians growled.

He'd been reckless in his younger days, but the loss of a steed had taught him never to venture into tight confines without eyes on the outside. He didn't have the crewmen to spare for the task and anyway they'd get torn apart quicker than blinking if the enemy were waiting in ambush. Besides, you needed three men minimum to get the most out of a tank like this; a driver, a loader and a gunner. Although vox-ops was non-essential, he wasn't sending Gantse out on foot. He'd be up the creek without a paddle if the vox went down.

So they sat there, ensconced within the belly of the Nightshade with their sister steed, the Proud Hunter idling behind them. If Julians had known the fate that awaited him, he might just have taken a few more risks.

xxx

Alri was dead. Borer beetles had chewed out his eyes and burrowed into his brain. Hew was down with spines of some crystalline substance perforating his bodysuit. If they could get him to a medic he might live, provided the spines were toxic, but the pain was enough to make him howl and writhe with agony.

Shopal gritted his teeth in frustration.

The serpentine bugs had been joined by a small host of spine-gaunts and termagants. His men were keeping them at bay but with only six of them left standing things were looking grim.

'I'm telling you, man, we can't stay here…' Antillus was almost hysterical. He'd fought the abhuman cultists of Fered Roathi without flinching. He'd even fought tooth and claw against the local mutants, but these xenos were obviously too much for him. Shopal just wished he'd shut the frak up and get on with it.

'I don't hear you offering me any solutions, numb-nut!'

Antillus fell silent, concentrating on keeping his skin whole as a fresh wave of spine-gaunts assailed them. Orpio forced them back but his flamer had started rattling and that was not a good sign.

'Sarge, there's a door back here behind the crates.' Choffre yelled. 'I've tried blasting the lock out but this pea-shooter ain't cutting it…'

Shopal took a moment to toss him the bolt pistol from his belt-holster. He'd purloined it from the armoury back on Fered Raothi as a souvenir.

'I'll be wanting that back,' he yelled as he turned back to the job at hand.

The bolt pistol barked, blasting a hole in the aluminium door and smashing the lock out. Choffre rolled the door up to admit them to the warehouse interior.

'Come on,' he cried, taking up a covering position to one side of the opening.

Orpio used the last of his prom to make pursuit a toasty prospect and the squad piled into the warehouse. Antillus got his shoulder under Hew's arm and dragged him through, Okar limping on ahead favouring his battered leg. Shopal tossed his hellgun to Choffre and reclaimed his bolt pistol before taking point.

He led them through a small office into a well-swept corridor, then through into a broad mezzanine beyond. The name of the owning company was stencilled in big bold letters facing the outer doors.

'Well, would you look at that?' Shopal grinned for the first time since they'd started on this wild goose chase. 'Kalliko Merchant House, right where we wanted to be. Come on.'

He shot out the glass doors fronting the building and stepped out into the street. Fifty metres to the north-east he could see the squat, menacing forms of the Pardus Hunter Killers.

'Let's get moving before they catch up…'

xxx

There was an infirmary set up in the room next door to the one they'd used to interrogate Luek. It was well stocked and Vaughn had no trouble finding iodine and gauze to apply a field dressing to his torn and bloodied ear. Binding the wadding in place with a crepe bandage he pulled his cap on gingerly, wincing as the dressing shifted slightly.

He cast about for some painkillers but the medication was all locked away. He shrugged and resigned himself to the discomfort. He'd experienced worse than this when he was wounded during the assault on Five Rivers. This was a mere scratch in comparison.

He stalked out into the corridor, the clipping of his iron-shod combat boots echoing from the stark white-tiled walls and floor.

He headed for the front exit. Rhys should be there with whatever transport he managed to scare up to take them to the front. But as Vaughn turned a corner into corridor 1a he was brought up short by the incongruous sight of blood. Lots of it.

Corridor 1a was where the main service elevator was located. The doorway to said elevator was landmarked with a trail of blood congealing on the tiled floor. The drag-trail wound off in the opposite direction to that from which Vaughn approached, disappearing around a corner further up the hall.

Vaughn pressed the elevator call button and waited for the bell to ping and the doors to slide open. He had seen death in abundance and so he did not blanch as he looked down at the remains of the medicae. He'd been butchered.

He reached for his pistol and cautiously followed the blood trail into the next corridor.

The blood trail dwindled to almost nothing as it wound down the corridor. Vaughn followed it as far as he could. Before long it was just a spattering that dwindled to a drip. By the time it had faded in was in the western wing of the building and in unfamiliar territory.

A scream rang out, punctuated by a gurgling death rattle. Vaughn followed the direction it had come from and rounded a corner to see something hunched over the prone body of a medical orderly, whose white scrubs were steadily turning red.

Vaughn took careful aim with his pistol but the thing had already detected him and it moved before he could pull the trigger. It spun about and started towards him, moving low and fast… almost too fast.

He pumped a single shell at it, aware that he had only the one clip and not wanting to waste a single round. Nevertheless he missed, exploding ceramic tiles instead of alien flesh.

The commissar back-tracked as it rapidly closed the distance between them, carefully squeezing off another round that clipped the creature's armoured cranial plating but did little damage.

'Frak this,' he swore, turning on his heel and running for it. In a vain attempt to slow it down he pulled internal doors shut and threw obstacles to the tiles as he fled. The creature too it all in stride and ate up the distance between them. Vaughn made for the infirmary, reasoning that it had a hefty metal door and dead-bolt, not to mention a plethora of sharp-bladed instruments that would serve should he run out of ammo.

Halfway there he turned, determined to do some damage before he was cornered.

The bolter barked again and again as the cyclone of alien tooth and claw hissed and scrabbled its way towards him. Two out of five shots hit the mark, blowing off one of its left appendages and smashing through the thoracic exoskeleton under the other.

It was slowed, but still abominably mobile. With just two rounds left he reached the infirmary and slammed the door shut behind him. The deadbolt slid into place and Vaughn cast about for a weapon.

The door shuddered behind him, slammed from without by the Tyranid.

The young commissar reached up to take a heavy cleaving instrument down from the rack. It was a curved length of razor-sharp steel with a handle at either end, used for breaking through breast-bones during autopsies. Heavy and unwieldy, it was the most suitable thing he could find.

At the third impact, the door toppled inward. Vaughn brought up the pistol but the creature had ducked aside, remaining outside the room.

'Come and get some, you freak!' he cried, pistol poised.

It came in a rush. He had enough time to squeeze one shot out before the pistol was sent flying from his numbed fingers.

It missed.

xxx

'This is like attacking a Leviathan with spit-wads!' Toal cried in frustration.

Darron shrugged and hosed the trygon with las anyway. At best they were distracting it from whatever fell errand it had embarked upon, but they couldn't go on like this forever. The fuel dump was worryingly close by.

Lita's Valkyrie circled overhead, pumping autocannon fire into its toughened hide and doing only slightly more damage than the men on the ground. The thing writhed in frustration, lashing out with the massive talons than had already killed three of Darron's boys. The pilot could have had a free shave if he'd stuck his head out the window.

Suddenly the trygon turned, its hide scored by something with a bit of kick to it. Darron tried to get a look at whatever it was but the bulk of the creature was in the way.

'What the hell is that?' he asked over the bead. Lita's voice came crackling back, barely within range of the short-distance vox.

'We've got sentinels coming in from the north. They're ours!'

'Finally, some good news for a change,' but he knew it wouldn't be enough, even if they were the anti-tank squadron.

The trygon howled its ear-splitting clarion call and coiled its lower body underneath it.

'Aw, frak,' Toal swore, grabbing Darron's upper arm and shoving him towards a nearby building. 'It's gonna jump… get into cover, now!'

The ground literally trembled underfoot as the trygon exerted massive pressures to launch itself into the air. It entered a shallow arc that brought it down in amongst the sentinel walkers with its talons scything out. The ground shuddered again as it landed.

The sentinels never stood a chance.

One was crushed beneath the creature's sinuous torso. Another was skewered from above by a scythe-claw. The third managed to turn but hadn't got very far before the trygon batted it against the rockrete wall. The crunching sound of the impact made Darron wince, but the trygon wasn't finished.

It plunged its talon into the sentinel three times, breaking it to pieces and rupturing the fuel cells. The explosion rocked it back onto its haunches, but it was impervious to the flames that caressed it.

'What do we do now, boss?' Toal asked. The rest of the squad had formed up around him.

'Not much we can do,' he replied. He was rapidly losing hope that the armour would ever turn up. The weight of despair cast its shadow on them all and they waited in silence. What they waited for, none of them really knew.

Fifty metres away the trygon stretched itself to its fullest height and let slip a deafening roar of victory, its manifold claws stretched wide and its massive head thrown back. It was akin to a force of nature, raw and unstoppable as a typhoon and yet so unnatural as to be an abomination.

'What can men do against that,' Darron muttered to himself, unable to think.

Suddenly the trygon buckled over, struck in the thorax by a blinding beam of white light that pierced its impervious hide. A second beam struck it high in the back so that it writhed and coiled in upon itself, claws flailing now, striking the surrounding structures and bringing masonry and metallic support struts into the street.

The beams struck again simultaneously and at almost the same point. The seemingly indestructible trygon fell in two pieces, its victorious roar turned to the squealing of terror mingled with pain.

Darron's spirits soared and his men cried out, punching the air as the Hunter Killers moved laboriously into view, surrounded on either side by the white armoured troopers of Shopal's section.

'You took your blessed time, Emperor love you!' Darron cried,

The trygon twitched and twisted, screaming in its death throes as the tankers finished it off, slicing it open and spilling its steaming insides into the streets. Darron made his way over to greet Shopal, immediately picking up on the bad vibes that rolled off his in waves. That wasn't like Shopal.

The top hatch popped open and the tank commander dropped to the asphalt, a satisfied look on his face. Darron was about to hold out a hand in thanks when Shopal socked him one straight to the jaw.

Darron stood frozen in surprise as his friend proceeded to lay into the man, kicking him and punching him where he lay, curled into a ball and yelping for someone to help him.

Toal and one of the others grabbed Shopal and pulled him off the tank commander, struggling to control the frenzied sergeant.

'What the frak's going on here?' Darron enquired. Shopal, coldly calm from start to finish, simply shrugged himself free and turned to stalk away. Darron knelt to attend to the tanker.

'You okay, buddy?'

Command Jared Julians groaned as he rolled onto his back.

'Get me to a sick bay, you idiot…'

xxx

The prey-thing had ceased spitting fire. As it crouched in a fighting position in the small, bright space it gurgled in its incomprehensibly language. The soft-skinned creature had picked up a silvery talon and this was held before it, menacingly, but the fear-stench was coming off of it in waves.

The ravener swayed from side to side, weighing up its prey with gimlet eyes, drooling with anticipation, and relishing the taste of its fear.

Combat hormones rushed through its system, dulling the pain of its injuries. It didn't know that it was dying – such concepts are as alien to the Tyranid as they themselves are to humans. Death is just another part of the cycle of proliferation. All it really understood at that moment was the overwhelming urge to feast upon living flesh.

It flexed two pairs of long scything talons and the rending claws between, unconsciously deciding upon its plan of attack even as it darted forward.

One claw took the prey-thing high in the shoulder, another sliced through the meat above his hip. Blood-mist permeated the creatures sense, driving it into akilling frenzy. Another scythe missed and the sharp tip broke off as it struck the wall behind its foe. Close now, it reached out with the rending claws, seeking to crush the thing's rib-cage and spill its organs. But the prey had been waiting for this and lashed out hard with the silvery claw, hacking through the tendons in both wrists and rendering them useless.

Hissing with rage and frustration the ravener retreated, hastily withdrawing the talon that had pierced the prey and narrowly avoiding a second swing of the blade, aimed at its throat.

The prey stank of hatred as it pressed home a futile assault, swinging the heavy blade in tightly controlled arcs. The ravener deflected it with the broken scythe and lashed out with the opposing limb, slicing and chunk from the man's right cheek and only narrowly missing the major artery in its throat.

The silvery blade came back around, smashing through the chitinous exoskeleton protecting the ravener's thorax and sending ichor cascading to the slippery tiles. The ravener lashed out wildly, trying to drive the prey-thing back and make room for a concerted counter attack, but it could feel itself weakening as its lifeblood poured from it in a torrent.

The blade crashed home again, lodging in the ravener's cranial plating and sticking there. Unable to free it the prey-thing finally backed away, butting up against a long counter that dominated the back wall of the room.

Sensing a chance for victory, the ravener lunged, lashing out with scything talons and even with its useless rending claws as it threw its full weight forward. The prey-thing pulled itself up onto the counter before it could strike home and planted both feet against the ravener's shoulders, barely stopping it before the massive, needle-toothed jaws could lodge in his flesh. It flailed for a weapon, wildly, its blunt-fingered paw coming up with a bulbous metallic canister that it proceeded to use as a bludgeon.

If the Tyranid could feel anything akin to joy, this was what filled the ravener's tiny brain-stem as it flailed its head and claws to get at its struggling prey. It felt the nearness of victory and nothing would stop it now.

But the prey-thing summoned up its last reserves of strength, allowing its knees to bend under the strain of hold the ravener away. It raised the canister and brought it down hard on the ravener's cranial plating, driving the blade deeper and stunning it with the sheer concussive force of the blow.

The next thing the ravener knew, its jaws were forced wide by the metallic canister. In its frenzy it bit down, unable to crush the thing but unable to distend its jaw far enough to dislodge it either. The prey-thing shoved hard with its legs, sending the stunned Tyranid into a flailing heap.

As it managed to get upright, shaking its heavy head in a vain attempt to free its mouth-parts, it caught sight of something that made even the raveners blood ruin cold. The prey had taken up the death-spitter once more, holding it out at arms length, aimed directly as the ravener's head.

It gurgled something that might have been language. Then it fired.

That split second played out in vivid detail. The hammer fell, igniting the death-spitter's propellant and sending the hard, explosive pellet surging at massive speed down the barrel of the snub-nosed weapon, spinning as it burst with a gout of flame from the muzzle. The air was split by the dull, barking resonance of the weapon's discharge. Then the round hit the canister lodged in the ravener's jaws and both exploded.

The ravener knew no more.

xxx

Of the eleven tanks involved in Colonel Sidellus' spearhead, only four remained operational. The Colonel's own tank was stranded. Another had been quickly overwhelmed and was now a burning wreck. The Commissar, catching to tail end of the spearhead far too quickly, had accidentally rammed into the back of an Exterminator, resulting in a catastrophic explosion that had killed seven of Corgan's man and crippled another Russ. Two more had overshot the spearhead and, in trying to turn, they'd exposed their rear armour to the venom cannons of a warrior brood. They burned as readily as dry tinder.

The five remaining tanks had lined up and jammed their gears into reverse, backing towards the barricades. Corgan had never seen anything quite so ridiculous as a Leman Russ Battle Tank going backwards. One of them had stalled in the attempt to go into reverse and rather than spend precious minutes trying to get it going, the tank's commander had ordered his men out, remaining behind himself to make the attempt. The 'Nids had prised him out of his steed like a canned sardine.

The defence of the forward positions lasted another ten minutes or so before the Imperial Guards were forced back by their losses, unable to fully man the defences.

Corgan kept the retreat ordered and controlled, making the Tyranids pay once more for every yard they retook. He staggered his way back across the carpet of rendered corpses to mount his Chimera, dropping into the cupola to man the storm bolter.

His exhaustion was given no quarter. The pain of his wound throbbed in the back of his brain, demanding his attention. His sinuses were bunged up with the fine, greasy ash of burnt flesh but at least that meant he couldn't smell the sour stench of roasting bodies.

His ears rang with the constant bombardment of hi-ex detonanations. The cries of his men seemed to come from far off even when they were standing next to him.

So it was that he didn't hear Wheln at first. The vox-officer had opened the top-hatch behind the turret and was bawling to try and get his attention. When finally he turned it was to see Wheln and all the rest of his squad pointing up at the smoke-filled sky with expressions of bewilderment on their hard, lined faces.

He followed their eyes to see that even the sky was aflame. The grey-stained atmosphere was streaked with black contrails, fanning out behind myriad burning comets that picked up speed as they fell. With dull horror weighing leaden in his gut he realised that several of them were homing in on their position, while yet more seemed to be falling farther to the north-east.

His first thought was that this was the second Tyranid seeding ship having made orbit and offloaded its mycetic spores, but he had somehow expected such an event would be far more terrifying than this display. He counted ten comets coming their way, five or six more to the north, nowhere near enough for it to be Tyranids.

His heart surged. This could only mean one thing!

As the comets reached a hundred and fifty feet or so their tips exploded, firing retro-burners that slowed the descent exponentially. The comet-flames died back, revealing charred black pods that fair glowed with the friction of atmospheric re-entry. Then they impacted, causing the ground beneath the Chimera to buck violently and sending up a shower of charred earth and bone-meal.

As smoke swirled about the impact craters a flickering of light could be seen within, accompanied by the staccato bark of bolter fire. Hugely armoured forms materialised like shadows out of legend, fanning out from the craters and bringing death to the Tyranids that found themselves, once again, stranded in the open.

'Space Marines!' cried one of the men, or perhaps it was all of them in unison. Corgan couldn't tell, a shock-wave of relief almost caused him to pass out as he watched the warriors of the Emperor bring retribution to the foe.

Disciplined volleys of bolter fire tore swathes of destruction in the milling Tyranids as no less than eight full squads emerged from their drop pods. The remaining two gave violent birth to the massive armoured forms of twin dreadnoughts, assault cannons spitting streams of ripping death throughout the Tyranid ranks.

'It's a beautiful thing,' Frocar intoned, seemingly for a great distance, when really he'd hoisted his heavily augmented frame up onto the roof of the Chimera and was perched next to the turret.

'I couldn't agree more,' Corgan replied as he watched the Tyranids break and melt back into the jungle.

Wheln was busy taking down scribbled notes from the vox traffic and issuing acknowledgements down in the bed of the Chimera. From what he was saying Corgan was able to piece together the bigger picture. The Tyranids were in full retreat, proving that their hive mind was intelligent enough to recognise an untenable situation. The Catachans were employing full scale hit and run attacks, intending to take out large chunks of the enemy force as they fled. Impotent until this moment, the jungle-fighters' work had begun in earnest.

The Marines were stoically silent on the vox channels, but as the last of the Tyranids disappeared into the shadowy tree-line they about-faced and started the trek back towards the Imperial defences.

Corgan sensed that the Battle of Gurshun had been saved from a pitiful defeat, but that the Battle for Gunga IV yet hung in the balance.

* * *

**_A/N - So this concludes the first phase of the Battle for Gunga IV. In the next few chapters, the Imperial Guard and Space Marines will have to find a way to purge this virgin world of the xenos filth, while in the darkness of deep space, the Imperial Navy fights to stave off the full might of a Tyranid invasion fleet that could render all their sacrifices vain._**

**_Thanks to everyone that's reviewed, so far. I don't seem to get many, but the quality more than makes up for the lack of quantity. I think this is mainly because my stories are not "contraversial" and generally stick to the fluff, but what can I say, I'm a traditionalist. Look out for some slightly less conventional stories coming up in the wake of this one. I'm working on a short "Rainbow Six" style of thing and also one inspired by "The Godfather (in the 41st Millenium)". We may also see a brief (but needless to say; bloody) "Return to Necromunda"._**


	14. Top Brass

'Whose idea was it to put us in white?' Corgan cursed as he ducked into the long black limousine that would carry them the top-brass conclave. His crisp white dress uniform had gathered landing-pad dust thrown up by the Valkyrie's vectored engines. Wheln took out a static brush and did what he could to clean it off.

'I don't see that a little bit of dirt will make much difference, sir. They'll look down their noses at us however clean we are.'

'That doesn't mean we shouldn't at least make the effort,' Vaugh admonished him, brushing his leather greatcoat down with stiff, jerky motions caused by the binding of his own, extensive wounds.

The last three days had been tough on them all. There was no rest for the wicked. The cleanup duties had fallen to the Guard. Chimera troop carriers were used to cart truck-loads of corpses from the battle-field to the mass-graves south of town. Most of the bodies were unrecognisable and the Tyranid spores had acted as a necrotic catalyst. There was nothing quite as nauseating as liquefying flesh.

The final death-toll had been collated. Five hundred Orrax and eight-hundred-fifty Vandians had fallen. The Pardus had lost seventeen of their tin boxes, another twenty-five would need major repairs, leaving them at eighty-five per cent effective. The Catachans losses had not been declared, they were still in the field, keeping the Tyranids on their toes.

Vaughn had lost a lot of blood from his wounds. Trooper Rhys had found him lying in a heap, looking like he'd taken on the Tyranid horde all by himself. As it happened it was just one ravener, it had nearly done for him all the same. The medics had cleaned him up and got a few pints of blood into him, but he was still pale and drawn. He was lucky his wounds had avoided infection, there was no telling what nasty spores or bacteria the creature had been carrying.

Corgan had taken a fever even before their Astartes allies could greet him. The borer beetle was to blame. Luckily his crash suit had saved his arm by slowing the circulation of blood and administering antibiotics and sterilisers. Many more had not been so fortunate. A goodly part of the death toll was made up of men that had died of infected wounds, an inevitable risk when fighting the Tyranid.

But they'd won themselves a window of opportunity. It would take a few days for the Tyranids to regroup, thanks to the continued efforts of the Jungle Fighters. The Hive ship was damaged, but it was likely that it was still capable of replenishing the ranks. The question was what tactics they would employ in the light of their initial failure. It was too easy to fall into the trap of seeing them as a mindless eating machine. Corgan was unwilling to underestimate their level of cunning and intelligence.

'So, what's the itinerary,' Vaughn asked, the weariness heavy in his voice. Wheln took out the communiqué from his folio and read out the sequence of events.

'We're required to attend a social gathering to introduce ourselves to the reinforcing regiments, followed by a formal dinner. After the meal there's to be a tactical briefing to discuss a counter-attack.'

'Sounds like a regular party,' Corgan griped.

Wheln smiled mischievously and pulled a glossy nalwood case from his kitbag. Unclasping it he reached in and took out a shining gold coin attached to a red and white ribbon.

'What's this?' Corgan asked.

'Your medals, sir.'

'I've got my lanyards, what more do you want?'

'The men insisted, sir. We balloted. You lost.'

Corgan scowled. Vaughn failed to suppress a smirk. Wheln was dead-pan.

'Since when has this regiment been a democracy?'

But he allowed his adjutant to pin the medals onto his jacket. First came the Star of Valour, won for his heroics up on Pelloris Ridge when he'd held forth the Imperial spearhead. Next to this he attached the campaign medal for Fered Roathi IV, a silver pendant with a yellow ribbon. The Crux Imperialis came next, a cruciform Aquila in gold, inlaid with mother of pearl. This he'd earned after his leadership of the covert ops in Five Rivers and of the final assault on the Administratum Hub. Three command victories in succession during the same campaign had entitled him to the award and Draven had insisted on bestowing it.

After tonight, he would likely have a fourth and a fifth to pin beside the first three. The Crimson Heart because he'd been wounded and yet continued to fight, not as much of an honour as the Medallion Crimson, but an excuse for a shiny bauble nevertheless. The other was as yet undisclosed, apparently a celebration of his successful defence of Gurshun.

'I look like a bloody peacock,' he muttered.

'Then you won't look out of place, I'm sure,' Vaughn elaborated.

Corgan ran a finger round the inside of his snug collar. He could have done without the formal dinner, not least because he was required to wear the starchy dress-rags designed for the Orrax.

The black felt collar was decorated with the two-star pins of his rank on either lapel. His epaulets were edged in silver braid with metallic blue threads shot through the weave and studded with silver buttons. The cuffs were black like the collar and striped with three circlets of thick silver braid. His left arm bore the badge of his unit, a grinning skull in silver, above yet another indication of rank. The right bore the silver skull incorporated with the traditional Imperial Aquila. The seams of his trousers were lined with the same black felt that appeared at collar and cuffs, but with silver piping instead of braid. The boots he wore had been polished to a high sheen, though not by him.

Last but not least, the white forage cap, complete with embellishments in silver braid and bearing the regimental icon. This perched on the top of his shaven scalp and was so white that it almost glowed. At least this part of his uniform was not too ostentatious. He could have worn a ridiculously heavy peaked cap, similar to that worn by Vaughn, but he'd refused point-blank and the designer of the uniform had been forced to find a different solution.

The boots pained him. They were tight and uncomfortable. He hadn't worn them in and hadn't had any intention of doing so. He was only wearing them now because Wheln had blockaded his rooms until he put them on. His adjutant could be particularly strong willed about certain things. He supposed this was a legacy from his life before Orrax, when he was PA to some Pardus politician.

'This is a waste of time,' he muttered, but neither of his companions was in the least bit bothered. In fact, Wheln seemed to be enjoying himself. Vaughn was obviously still fighting the after-effects of his injuries. He popped a couple of pills as the limo drew up outside the Explorator Conglomerate Guildhouse in Greater Harkon, where the dinner was to be hosted, and which the Guard was using as a base of operations.

Greater Harkon was located close enough to the three front-line battle-zones, and yet far enough away from the hive-ship to be the ideal HQ and reserve barracks. The nine regiments that had been deployed initially had not had time to set up a line of communication. But now that the reinforcements had arrived, the chain of command had been established at Greater Harkon. As such, Harkon was crawling with military personnel and the Guildhouse was filled to bursting with fancily dressed soldiery.

The donjon's staff opened the massive armaglass doors to Corgan and his companions, asking them to sign a docket and giving them a small transmitter circuit that would form a temporary ID and give them clearance to enter the secure areas of the building. Corgan was tempted to drop it in the nearest trash receptacle. He hated anything that would allow other people to get an edge on him, like the microchip implant in his skull that he hadn't yet had the opportunity to have removed.

Before long they were passing through a heavily guarded door and into the foyer of the luxurious hotel block that adjoined the Guildhouse's central hub. Wheln led the way to the reception desk and they were asked to present their ID chips.

'Will the Major be requiring a suite of rooms for the night?' asked the hotelier.

'No he will not,' Corgan growled. 'I'll be getting back to my war zone at the earliest opportunity.' He didn't intend to be a victim to decorum. Vaughn winced at the tone but the hotelier didn't even bat an eyelid.

'Very well, sir. Crivens here will direct you to the dining suite.'

They were led to a single-storey ballroom arrayed with approximately forty circular tables and a single long rectangular table at the far end. Men and women of all different shapes, sizes and colours thronged the floor, though very few were yet seated.

'I believe you will be seated at the long table, Major. The Commissariat officers are all seated on tables twenty-two through twenty-five. I don't believe your adjutant is down to be seated at all.'

'That's okay,' Wheln cut in before Corgan could express what he thought of that particular arrangement. 'If you could direct me to the kitchens I'll arrange myself some real food.'

The two men disappeared, leaving Corgan and Vaughn to themselves.

'Drink?' Corgan asked.

'Anything that'll help to numb the pain,' the Commissar replied.

They ambled over to the long bar. Here Vaughn was accosted by another young commissar, an acquaintance from his scholam days. Before he knew it, Corgan was standing alone amongst men he instinctively despised.

He wandered towards the high table, nursing his triple malt whisky and scowling at all and sundry.

Colonel Sidellus intercepted him half way there, accompanied by two other officers, one in the crisp white of a naval officer, the other wearing crimson with gold braid and wearing the rank insignia of a General.

'Good evening, Major, I hope I find you well?' said the Colonel.

Corgan nodded curtly.

'Allow me to introduce Lieutenant Commander Rhodes of the Imperial Navy and General Balian Torres of the Pardus PDF, High Command. Balian here will be taking overall command of the ground forces.'

Corgan shook hands with each man in turn, saying nothing. He'd not met Rhodes, even though he had been the one co-opted to facilitate the Guard landings and co-ordinate the initial defence of Gunga IV. It seemed he had stepped aside for the new man, who spoke in a low, unthreatening tone, completely at odds with his martial guise.

'I am glad to meet you, Major. My cousin the Colonel has informed me of how you saved his life at Gurshun. We are in your debt.'

'Just doing my job, general. It was a daring tactic and risky, but it bought us the time we needed.'

'This is just as you stated in your commendation report. The Colonel is most pleased to have been put forward for recognition.'

'I'm not overly familiar with military politics, General, but I know how to recognise a man's bravery, no matter what his motivations may be.'

Sidellus's complexion darkened a little at this comment. Corgan ignored him and continued.

'I wouldn't be here, wearing this uniform, if I hadn't wanted it for myself as much as for my men.' Sidellus was mollified somewhat.

'You are candid to the point of near-suicidal,' Rhodes put in, smiling a superior, aristocratic smile. 'I must admit, Major, that I was never going to put you in command of the Gurshun theatre. It was Sidellus here that insisted you were the man for the job. It seems he was correct.'

'I can't help but wonder how he came to that conclusion,' Corgan replied.

The men conversation turned to idle pleasantries. Torres seemed distant and distracted, nervous perhaps. Corgan was hardly surprised. The man wasn't even Guard. They'd really dredged the bottom of the barrel to drum up troops for the ground campaign. Four more regiments had been deployed, three of which were Pardus PDF, soft-bellied boys who'd never done anything other than drill and dress up. They'd die in droves, but at least they'd look good doing it. Torres was one of theirs.

The other unit was an under-strength formation of the Death Korps of Krieg. They'd seen some pretty spit out in the Demeter Sub-Sector fighting ork pirates. Hardened Fighters they may be, but there weren't enough of them to make any kind of dent in the Tyranid forces.

While the others engaged in small talk, Corgan surveyed the room, trying to spot Vaughn among the black-tops and feeling seriously over-exposed amidst the top-brass officers of the Imperial Guard and Navy.

After half an hour of tense boredom, a bell rang and they took their seats. Corgan was seated between two of the Pardus PDF officers, a Colonel and a Sergeant-Major. Opposite him were Sidellus and Rhodes, with several Navy toffs. Torres sat at the head of the table, less than three feet to Corgan's left.

Sidellus took the limelight over the starter courses, regaling the newcomers with the tale of his heroics at Gurshun. Corgan melted into the background quite happily, picking over the strange fruit and liqueur concoction that was put in front of him. He envied Wheln.

It transpired that his comfortable anonymity was short-lived, however. Sidellus rounded off his story with blustery praise for Corgan's 'daring rescue'. The limelight was well and truly handed off as the fresh-faced Pardus turned their awe-filled faces towards him.

As infantrymen themselves, they were less interested in Sidellus' armoured cavalryman's tales. They held Corgan in some sort of special regard. Corgan was determined to teach them to do otherwise.

'Tell us, Major, what was it like on the ground?' asked the Sergeant-Major, there were equal parts excitement and nervousness in his voice. 'Are they truly mindless automatons?'

Corgan resigned himself to his fate.

'Don't be fooled by what it says in your primers, gentlemen. It's true that most of these creatures would not be able to function independently and when their leaders are killed, they fall apart. But it is not true that the Tyranid machine as a whole is mindless… they're just single-minded. We were barely prepared to stave off an all-out assault. If not for the sudden arrival of the Astartes we would have been done for. Maybe the battle would still be raging now, but we'd be lost nevertheless. What's more, they knew that we couldn't stand up to it. They had inside information.'

There was a round of exclamations at this revelation. Corgan waited for it to subside before pre-empting the inevitable questions.

'There's an insidious genestealer cult in operation at Gurshun. I don't know how widespread it is, but I have no doubt that they leaked dispositional intel to the Tyranids before embarking on a guerrilla war behind our lines.'

'I'm sorry, Major,' Rhodes cut in, disbelief plain on his thick, drawling tones. 'But it's common knowledge that humans and Tyranids are completely incompatible. How would they translate such intelligence into a format that could be understood?'

'As far as I understand it, that's the whole point of the genestealer. They have a highly developed persona-matrix that falls somewhere between those of humans and Tyranids. Didn't anyone read the intelligence briefing pack? It provides detailed biological and behavioural information from studies conducted during and after the Ichar IV campaign. Was I the only one that received it?'

'It was transmitted to the war-zone commanders only, Major,' Rhodes elaborated. 'I myself didn't see the point of wasting my time on it. I take it that these creatures die just as any other biological organism…'

'Some harder than others,' Corgan countered.

'Perhaps, Major, it would be better for morale if we did not extol the strengths of our foes, but concentrated on how best to kill them…' Torres intervened.

'That's easier said than done, General. Cutting off the head will theoretically cause the body to die, if slowly. But imagine how difficult it would be to kill a man if he had a spare brain in his chest and another between his arse-cheeks. The Tyranid war-machine makes wide use of the redundancy theory. Cutting off the head is not enough. In an army the like of which we came up against you have to kill the Tyrants, then the Warriors, then the Zoanthropes. And all that succeeds in doing is to make the little critters run away. The Carnifexes, Genestealers and some of the other larger variants will keep on coming at you. By the time you deal with them, the smaller critters have rallied around reserve Tyrants and you're back to square one.'

'I hardly see how this is improving morale, Major,' Rhodes sneered.

'I'm not the kind of man that wraps his fist in silk before punching someone, Lieutenant-Commander. I'll tell it like it is and maybe that'll take some of the sting out of the enemy's shock-factor. It's a meat-grinder out there, but then you wouldn't know anything about that, would you?'

Rhodes smirked.

'You think to insult me, Major. It will not work. The Navy is the purview of the gentleman-soldier. Not for us the brutal simplicity of the bloody infantry.'

'It's precisely because I'm in the infantry that I say what I say. These men will have to fight as I have fought while you sip tisane up in your floating fortress, safely beyond arm's reach of the enemy.'

Rhodes nodded, acceding the point. The mood at table was significantly more subdued as they served the main course of roasted fowl in a sweet compote. The excitement of the Pardus men had diminished and each of them took to introspection as they contemplated what lay in store. Corgan devoured the dish with all the gusto of the dog-soldier who doesn't know when his next meal will be. It still wasn't enough to satisfy his appetite.

'Tell me, Major, those marking on the back of your head,' asked Rhodes, not even attempting to be discreet. 'What do they mean?'

The glint in the man's eye told Corgan that the man already knew the answer to his question. He was playing games, baiting a snare in the hopes of getting one over on the ex-penitent upstart. Corgan wasn't a man to brook insults lightly, but neither was he incautious.

'They're a warning to the over-inquisitive,' he replied, giving the man an opportunity to drop his line of conversation. He didn't take the hint, though he clearly recognised it for what it was.

'A warning of what, exactly?'

'That I'm generally uninhibited about hurting people.'

Rhodes sat back slightly, wiping his mouth with his napkin as he considered his next words.

'If you'll forgive my impertinence, Major, I believe your case-file states that you were on Orrax for a spell. For anyone who is unfamiliar with the name, Orrax is the second largest penitentiary in the sector. If I may, I would like to ask why were you on Orrax in the first place, Major?'

'In the first place? Well, perhaps that would be because I was born there, sir.'

Rhodes started to display the first signs of true irritation at Corgan's evasion. His attempt to humiliate the ex-penitent was requiring considerably more effort than he was prepared for and would have to be achieved by blunt and rather unsubtle means, at this rate.

'I assume that they did not tattoo your skull at birth, my good man…' he drawled, feigning a camaraderie that must have made his skin crawl.

'Good man? I'm surprised at your choice of words. Surely that is exactly the opposite of what you are trying to imply?' Corgan didn't allow the man to get a retort in. He continued on, bull-headed, taking the verbal exchange onto the battlefield. 'I was born on Orrax, sir, and then raised on Necromunda. I came back because a lot of people got on the wrong side of me and, as previously stated, I'm generally uninhibited about hurting people.'

The company at the table had recoiled during the exchange, unwilling to get in the way of either man's ire. Rhodes had evidently finished playing games.

'I put it to you, sir, that you and your men are nothing but a gang of thieving, murderous curs that should have been executed long before Orrax was even mentioned. Those medals you flaunt are an insult to the very foundations of the Imperium of Man.'

This was too much for Torres. He felt that Rhodes had gone too far and steeled himself to intervene.

'Please, Lieutenant-Commander, reserve yourself. Such behaviour is unbecoming of an officer of the Navy.' It wasn't generally deemed as decorous to raise one's voice, let alone openly insult a fellow officer.

'That's okay, General,' Corgan interjected. 'The Lieutenant Commander is only speaking the truth. Most of my boys _should_ have been done away with. The only reason they weren't is because there's a sector-wide amnesty, requiring leniency in judicial sentencing. And if you were to accuse me of being the _most_ deserving of such a fate, I'd agree with you right up to the hilt. But none of that changes the fact that here I am, pardoned of my infractions and a decorated war hero to boot, with a full regiment of similarly pardoned criminals behind me. We've all earned the right to fight as free men with all the rights and privileges of an Imperial Citizen. You can look down your aristocratic nose at me all you like, Rhodes. You can even sound off to your hearts content about my low moral fibre. It's not worth a fart to me. But if you really want to see why I was sent back to Orrax, all you have to do is make your move and I'll oblige.'

'Gentlemen, I must insist that you settle your differences!' Torres stated, firmly.

'But that's what this whole thing is about, isn't it, Rhodes? Differences…'

'Please, you're spoiling my dinner,' said another officer. A murmur of agreement rippled around the table.

'I'm done anyway, gentlemen. I'll see you at the briefing, no doubt…'

He pushed his chair back and left the table, prowling from the room with his tiger-like grace, loaded with silent menace.

xxx

The briefing had been underway for half an hour when Wheln decided to walk the grounds. He'd been taking a drink in the hotel bar with Corgan when he noticed a couple of mid-ranking Navy ratings looking over at him. They'd looked away just a little too hastily. Corgan had told him about the exchange with Rhodes before going into the secure annex. The men's behaviour immediately made Wheln suspicious. He hadn't survived the rigours of Orrax without developing a keen instinct for danger.

Just as he suspected, as he slipped out the front doors and turned, he caught sight of the two men leaving the bar at a deceptively brusque pace. He limbered his combat knife as he moved through the dimly lit tunnel that gave out onto the lush gardens of the hotel. Here he picked a likely ambush point and moved towards it, picking up speed.

A shadow lunged from the very bush he'd been intending to occupy, catching him a cracking blow to the jaw. His knife flew from his nerveless fingers. Another man, unseen, battered a meaty fist into his right kidney, sending him to his knees. The two men from the bar crunched towards him along the gravel-path.

'How do you like it, penitent scum? A taste of your own medicine, eh?' grunted one of his assailants. The others laughed, low and menacing, then all four of them laid into him with gusto.

Wheln curled into a ball as he'd learned to do on Orrax when the bully-boys came visiting his bunk-room. He'd had cracked ribs and broken limbs from those encounters and this beating didn't even come close to that bad. These men had no real taste for what they were doing, but they still messed him up some.

After what seemed like an eternity and still without evincing so much as a whimper from their victim, the four men back off and a fifth came into view. Wheln caught a glimpse of the man's face between his puffy eye-lids and knew that this man had a true mean-streak.

'Put him on his back,' the man said, quietly in a voice as slippery as silk. They men took a limb each, stretching Wheln into a spread-eagled pose. With considerable aplomb the man dealt him five cruelly placed kicks to his arm-pits, ribs and kidneys, forcing Wheln to cry out.

'You should have been killed a long time ago, so I'm going to make your death a lingering one,' the man hissed.

He lifted his booted foot and placed it on Wheln's throat, pressing ever so gently as first but applying more pressure as the moments of terror drew out. Wheln could no long scream out loud. He gurgled in fright and pain as the pressure became unbearable and then, with a sickening crack and a blast of white-hot pain, his trachea gave way and his air way closed up.

'Enjoy it, my penitent friend. These are you last moments this side of the warp!'

The man left, gesturing for the other, pale-faced men to follow as Wheln put his hands to his throat, his mind numb with explicit terror. His lungs began to burn, his chest felt like it was ready to explode. Spots danced before his eyes and the world started to go darker than the night that surrounded him.

Survival instincts surged to the fore. They'd brought him through the hell of Orrax and the firestorms of Fered Roathi. He even survived the Tyranids. He was damned if he was going to let some sadistic Naval officer snuff him out like a candle-flame.

He forced his hand to the knife at his belt. It was his only hope for release from the lingering torment of asphyxiation. With trembling hands he put the blade to his throat…


	15. Beasts Within and Without

Fleet-Captain Tarkon had seen pictographic reconstructions of Tyranid seeding ships from the many naval engagements of the Leviathan war. They didn't do justice to what he was seeing on the holo-scan that dominated the centre of the tactical pit in front of his throne.

Through the forward viewing port it was little more than a reflective speck, limned in the red-gold light of the Gunga star, but the scanning equipment rendered it in much finer detail.

The main hull section was broad at the stern, tapering towards the prow. The upper hull sections were layered plates of chitin that resembled the head-carapaces of the Tyranid warrior breed. The lower sections were bloated and lined with protuberances that resembled the sticking pads on the underside of an octopus' tentacle. These were, in fact, gigantic sphincters that belched plasma and bio-acid at anything that got too close.

The engine section in the aft quarters was a massive construct of heat-resistant bone. Within, massive chemical reactions provided the hulk with forward propulsion. Other smaller constructs flared and glowed all along the flanks and dorsal sections of the ship, attitude thrusters fed by the main reactor that gave the behemoth its limited manoeuvrability.

Two long, thick tentacles stretched forward from under the carapace, tipped with gargantuan claws so that it resembled nothing less than an unbelievably huge, space-going squid. Tarkon had seen crippled ships grappled in those tentacles and consumed by the gargantuan mouth parts that would open beneath the prow armour. It was a truly horrific sight.

Undaunted, Tarkon would lead the reserve flotilla in bringing about the destruction of this abomination. Under his remit he had three Dauntless class cruisers, five Firestorms, a Lunar class cruiser and three flights Cobra destroyers numbering fourteen in total. With his Mars cruiser heading up the task force, he hoped they would have enough guns to bring the prey down. If they couldn't, Gunga IV was doomed.

'Sound general quarters!' Tarkon ordered. 'Deck officer, signal the flotilla; attack formation Helios Rising. Fire control, warm up the guns. Helm, to me!'

Tarkon slipped into a self-induced psi-trance, interfacing with the ship through his mnemonic uplink. With a sickening lurch of consciousness he became the Justice of Terra. The ship's auspex sensors became his eyes and the freezing black void enveloped him. His mind thrummed with the sheer power pent up at his command.

He ran through a series of self-diagnostics check. He was aware of the weapons systems coming on line, comforted by the thrumming of the void shields as they encased the ship in an invisible envelope of raw energy.

He throttled back on the interface, rising to a semi-flesh state so that he could complete the preparations. The machine-spirit tugged at him like a drug, or an old friend longing to renew old ties, or a lover, coaxing him into her arms to succumb to the pleasures of their union. He had been trained to resist these urges. The interface must be pure and chaste if he was to maintain focus enough to guide her through the fray.

He turned his head slightly, fixing his loyal Warrant Officer with filmy eyes. The man's profile doubled and blurred as Tarkon struggled for focus.

'I would appreciate your presence on the gunnery deck, Brady. I expect we'll come under heavy fire and I don't want any… disappointments!'

'I'll bolster the crew, sir. Count on it.'

'We will engage from range, but there is also the possibility of boarding actions should we have to close the distance. Have the security details prepared.'

'Consider it done, Captain.'

Tarkon slipped back into the ether, his brain filled with calculations, mass versus thrust, closing distances, gunnery cones, vectors and course corrections. With a twitch of his fingers the three kilometre long behemoth dipped into a graceful manoeuvre, yawing three points to port while simultaneously rolling anti-clockwise to bring the starboard guns to bear on the abomination. The engines fired, a hot surge in Tarkon's veins, and the Justice of Terra lanced forward through the void.

He spoke, with the voice of the machine spirit, his metallic body vibrating with the reverberations of his loud-hailers.

'Children of the Imperium. We go into uncertainty, certain that our fates are in the hands of the Emperor. We go into battle, holding the fates of the defenceless in our own hands. We shall not falter, for the Emperor protects!'

xxx

The briefing chamber had been built as a conference room for visiting trade dignitaries. It was large and circular, with a recessed rostrum at the centre and surrounded by radiating galleries. It was nothing like the last such briefing Corgan had been a party to at Five Rivers, although in some ways it was no different. He was as outcast here and now as he had been then.

The command cadre consisted of men from all thirteen of the regiments on Gunga IV, most of whom had brought a number of subalterns with them. Intermingled were various Naval officers from the auxiliary transport fleet orbiting the planet.

General Torres occupied the rostrum, passing on instructions to the servitor that would operate the holo-pict projector for him.

Corgan took a seat on the rear-most gallery, looking down on a gang of walking dead-men and shaking his head. Vaughn joined him but said nothing, taking his place in silence. As the time approached for the briefing to begin, the last and most notable of the attendees arrived.

Chapter Master Ascertes Greathammer would have been a mild looking man, if you ignored the fact that he was Astartes. His face was open and almost friendly, though it was plain to see that he was as iron-hard as any of his breed behind that visage. Beside him strode a Chaplain in silver-studded black power armour, and in that moment, Corgan experienced a sickening flash of recognition.

It was the Chaplain's reconstructed face and cranium that gave it away, that glowing red eye that seemed to glare into the very soul of a man. These were the same Marines that had come to the Priory of Santa Luciana when Corgan was a boy, the same that had tried to induct him into the ways of the Space Marines.

A shiver of distaste went up his spine at the thought of the surgeries they'd described to him before he'd finally run away. He only prayed that it was too late for them to take him back and force the process upon him.

Corgan had more experience of dealing with the legendary Astartes than many men in the Imperial Guard. Usually the Guard only played side-saddle to the glorious chapters of the Space Marines, held in mild contempt by the mighty geno-engineered warriors. Long ago, before his sixteenth year, Corgan had been initiated into the recruitment programme of the Extartes Legion. He'd absconded before they could start cutting him open and putting things inside him, but he'd been one of their favoured prospects among that decade's crop of younglings.

Then, at Five Rivers almost a year ago, he'd encountered the mysterious Order of the Grey Knights. He'd nearly come a cropper because of his flash-fire temper and could easily have had his skull crushed by the blow Andros Geminon had levelled at him.

Torres called the conclave to order. Interrupting Corgan's reverie.

'Gentlemen, I will not keep you long. Allow me first to introduce Ascertes Greathammer, Master of the Extartes Space Marines Chapter. I must state that due to the lack of a dedicated Tactical Corps in this campaign, the plans for the coming engagement were designed and finalised by Lord Greathammer himself. I will now relate these plans to you. Please treat this intelligence as strictly classified.'

He nodded to the servitor down in its pit below the rostrum. With a snap and a fizz the holo-pict flickered to life, showing a 3D representation of the near-system space around the green and white globe of Gunga IV.

'Before we commence with the briefing, it has been given to me to know that the second of the two seeding ships was finally engaged this morning at oh-six-hundred hours. The 7th Reserve Flotilla has brought it to bay and will surely destroy it before it can make planet-fall.'

A great cheer rose around the room as Guard and Navy men punched the air in triumph. Corgan felt a modicum of relief, but knew well enough that it only took one ship to consume a planet's resources. It was all just a matter of time and resources. As long as the crashed seeding ship was able to consume the planetary bio-mass it would continue to produce soldiers to accelerate that end. As long as the ship was functioning, Gunga IV was in the bank. And besides, they hadn't killed the second ship yet. If anyone could mess the engagement up it was the Imperial Navy… Celebration was a little premature.

As quiet returned, Torres continued.

'The final phase of the defence of Gunga IV must be an outright offensive against the surviving hive-ship,' Torres continued. 'We cannot suffer the xenos to live. However, there are complications. The area immediately surrounding the hive ship will be seething with Tyranid spores, permeating the corpses of the fauna and flora, merely waiting for release. This will happen in time anyway if nothing is done, but that release can be prevented. Unfortunately, explosive force is not an option. If we bombard the wreck from orbit, we will merely accelerate the release of these spores. This leaves us with only one option. The wreck must be carefully and efficiently immolated by means of fire. This will destroy the spores and buy us time to combat the spread of the disease. If the Emperor favours our work, Gunga IV may yet remain an outpost of the Imperium of Man.'

The servitor changed the view, constructing a topographic display of the landscape surrounding the seeding ship, with the ship itself represented in vivid red. A green overlay represented the forest coverage, showing that all the foliage within a mile of the ship had been consumed. The terrain that was left was mostly rugged hills, riddled with gullies and ravines. There was very little level ground.

Torres talked through the plan, explaining the holographic representation as it played out before their eyes. Corgan's stomach fell, a sense of creeping horror nestled in his abdomen as the strategy unfolded. Gurshun had been bad, far worse, in some ways, than Pelloris Ridge or Five Rivers. Gurshun was a picnic compared to Operation Burnout. For the Orrax and Catachans, it was a suicide mission.

He looked aside at Vaughn.

'Madness,' he said.

'Ours is honour,' Vaughn replied, laconically. 'Theirs the glory!'

Torres asked for questions. Vaughn held up his hand to be heard. After one or two mundane and needless questions from the Pardus, Torres indicated for him to speak.

'General, what is to be done about the Genestealer cults infesting the cities?'

The Space Marine answered, speaking for the first time since his arrival.

'You will have two days to bring them to ground, Commissar. If you cannot do so in that time, we will hunt them down later. The hive-ship is our primary concern.'

Vaughn nodded, but he wasn't finished.

'Might I suggest that the spread of the cult may not be isolated to Gurshun alone. It is essential that all military units put strict security measures in place to safeguard weapons and supplies. I have discussed this with some of my fellow Commissars and, with your approval, General, we are willing to take on this duty.'

'I would say that was prudent, Commissar,' Torres replied. 'Thank you.'

A few questions followed, but Corgan knew they were the questions of frightened men, men who'd never fought in anything bigger than a street-fight before. For him, the briefing was at an end.

As the chamber emptied, he made his way out into the mezzanine with Vaughn in tow, wondering where he would find Wheln.

One of the hotel staff intercepted him at the entrance to the bar.

'Sir, would you please follow me?'

'Why would I do that?' he replied, gruff and irritable.

'We have your adjutant in a secure room, it appears that he has been involved in a fracas.'

'Take me to him…'

Wheln was strapped onto a break-down stretcher, his white uniform creased and muddied, the front soaked with blood. His throat had been heavily wadded with gauze that slowly seeped red. A doctor stood beside him, monitoring his vital signs.

'What the hell happened?' Corgan protested, already forming an idea of what it might be.

'Your man is stable, officer,' the doctor replied. 'It appears that he has been beaten quite badly, though the only broken bones appear to be his cracked ribs, nose and jaw. He has a severe concussion but it's manageable and he should recover.'

'His throat, doctor…'

'Yes, I was getting to that. As near as I can tell, his trachea was crushed underfoot as he lay on his back. The blood is the result of the patient's own ingenuity. He gave himself a rather clumsy tracheotomy. Nevertheless it saved his life. He would almost certainly have suffocated.'

'Who did this, Major?' Vaughn asked.

'Don't worry about it, Commissar. This'll keep. What can you do for him, doc? Will he be fighting fit in two days?'

'If you go down that road, he may never speak again. I can give him an artificial voicebox, but the nerve-bonding procedure must be done immediately and it will put him out of action for several days.'

Corgan looked down at Wheln's purpled, misshapen face. He felt a father's despair at seeing the quiet young man in such a state. He'd sheltered the kid all through the Fered Roathi Campaign, looked after him at the defence of Gurshun. He felt an immense guilt at not having been there for this. The decision he had to make was a difficult one, but for selfish reasons. He didn't know how he'd cope without Wheln's steadfast support.

xxx

Seven hours had passed since the Captain's address. Warrant Officer Hutchentz Brady was on tenterhooks. His security details had been dispersed to key points throughout the ship, organised into twenty platoons of twenty-five men. He himself had followed the Captain's orders and patrolled the gun decks with his own security detail, near-deafened by the thunderous recoil of the macro-cannons.

With much swearing and cursing he whipped the fearful deck-ratings into their work, backed up by the Gunnery Officer's ensigns. The sight of the heavily armed and armoured security men was usually enough to urge the reluctant men into action. On a ship as battle-hardened as the Justice they only rarely had to use their rifle-butts for encouragement.

The Justice of Terra spat cleansing fire into the heavens without cease, Brady only wished he could see whether or not it was doing any good. There were no portholes down here, no windows on the void. Even the gunnery officers had only the most vague idea of what they were shooting at. Their calibrations came direct from the Captain or his bridge crew. All they really had to worry about was that the guns fired and fired often.

The Captain's thunderous voice filled the compartments with yet more noise. Only snatches could be made out over the constant rippling boom of the ship's weapons, but it was good to hear his exhortations.

Brady had been in a number of battles. Some of them had lasted for days. He knew that war in the void was a very different beast from the cut-and-thrust of eye-to-eye combat. He schooled himself to patience.

xxx

Corgan's bunkroom window looked out on the blasted, blackened, smouldering wastelands east of Gurshun. He stood at his window, leaning on the windowsill in just his undergarments, and brooded.

Lita stretched her copiously muscled arms above her head, sinking down into the bedclothes, still warm with spent passion. Her lover's well-toned body was silhouetted against the strong early morning light, criss-crossed with the thick dressings that hid his shoulder wound. She relished the sight, but sensed that there was something bothering him.

'Something's the matter,' she said. 'What're you so up tight about?'

He grunted, answering without turning.

'I'm just worried about the mission.'

'Bull!' she replied. 'I know you well enough to be certain you don't worry about things you can't do anything about. You'll follow the plan and you'll do your duty!'

'And just what is my duty?' he growled, irritation creeping into his tones.

'To bring as many of your troops through the coming engagement as you can. You'll lose a lot of men along the way and perhaps there are things you could do to reduce that loss, but the galaxy has a way of balancing the scales. A man falls because he's destined to fall. You can't change that. It's the will of the Emperor.'

'So maybe I'm just not cut out for this job…' he mumbled.

That wasn't like Corgan. Lita knew something of his past. He'd always been independent before, a loner who looked out for his own stake in life. He'd been tossed into the role of surrogate father against his will on Pelloris Ridge, but he'd found a home there. He'd taken to it with a stern dedication that spoke of inner depths of loyalty that no amount of denial could quash. He'd reflected on his situation at the time but resigned himself to the role thrust upon him. It didn't bode well to hear him questioning his lot.

'You're not just worried about the mission, are you?'

Corgan hung his head, visibly suppressing a sigh and gripping the sill with white knuckled hands.

'Things feel different,' he said though gritted teeth. There was a weight of emotion in his voice that caused Lita to sit up. She would have gone to him if she'd thought it was what he wanted. 'I went through the Five Rivers campaign in a blur,' he continued. 'Not once did I contemplate the fact that I could die at any moment. Perhaps that was because I was surrounded by constant reminders of the fact. It just never occurred to me that it could happen to me too. I look back on those experiences now and they take on an unreal, almost mythical proportion in my mind, almost as if they happened to someone else and I was just watching it on a vid-screen. I wonder if it was some kind of madness. But whatever it was that made me so impervious, when I stood in front of that alien horde, I realised it was gone.

'I found myself thinking about the past and all the loose ends that I might never be able to tie up and it scared me stiff. It was some mundane comment from Frocar that brought me round enough to fight in the end, but otherwise I think I might just have stood there and let them roll over me.'

'Escabar, you're scaring the crud out of me, talking like this.'

'I'm not a frakking machine, Lita. You of all people should know that. I can be just as scared as the next guy… just as insecure.'

'I know… sorry. I'm just not used to seeing you like this. I'm not very good at this whole emotional thing.' All the men she'd known and been attracted to had been the strong, silent type. Perhaps that was selfish, in a way, or perhaps it was just her inexperience. She thought enough of Corgan not to cut and run as she wanted to at that moment. But her mind had been chewing away at what he'd said and she couldn't stop her curiosity from taking control.

'So what are these loose ends you want tying up, is it anything I can help with?'

'You wouldn't want to know.'

The way he said it plucked a familiar chord in Lita's brain. She'd had relationships in her youth and heard that tone before. She also knew that you couldn't say that to a woman and not expect immediate jealousy.

'If it's a woman, you could just say so…' she said, as mildly as she could manage as she fought with confusing emotions.

'Like I said, loose ends…' he replied, clamming up after his earlier out-flowing of emotion.

Lita pulled her clothes on. Corgan stayed at the window, staring out at everything and nothing. Done, she moved to the door. With her hand on the door handle she spoke, not daring to look his way.

'We all have history, Escabar. The trick is to forget about it. You can't go back. You can never go back!

With that she left. She didn't know what she felt for Escabar Corgan at that moment. She was hurt, confused, perhaps a little angry, but most of all just plain scared. The fear of being alone had been a constant in her life from when she was a little orphan girl on the streets of Garganis Aquilas. She'd learned to cope with it, but it had never left her.

You had to learn how to deal with fear at some point in your life. She wondered if Corgan had ever bothered.

xxx

The Justice of Terra ploughed through the wreckage cloud of a Firestorm frigate, dispersing the hulk's contents in her bow-wake. Tarkon felt a shimmer of interference as the void-shields took the brunt of the impact, then they were out the other side, circling the beast at combat speed and at the very limits of their weapons range.

The Justice's lances reached into the darkness, rippling along the underside of the seeding ship as it gathered the aft quarters of a crippled Dauntless cruiser in its tentacles.

A silent ballet of war played out amongst the stars.

One light cruiser and three escorts had been destroyed or devoured in the twelve hours since they'd engaged the Beast. The Cobras executed lightning passes, pounding it with torpedoes. The bloated hulk spat fountains of flame from three major breaches, but it seemed unperturbed.

Had Tarkon been aware of his mortal body, he would have made a conscious effort to unclench his jaw. The movements of his fingers that guided the ship's attitude and course were completely unconscious, now. He was inseparable from the machine, as often happened in a combat situation.

The Dauntless cruiser, Stormchild, suffered a critical plasma hit. She had been closing with the Beast at an oblique angle to deliver a close-range torpedo salvo and now her entire left flank was seared away. Tarkon heard Captain Forrilan's last words over the mnemonic link.

'Cut forward thrust by one third and divert all power to the starboard attitude thrusters. In the name of the Emperor, give me ramming speed!'

Stormchild slowed, her starboard flank lighting up as the attitude thrusters strained to deliver maximum force. The Dauntless class cruiser turned expertly into a collision vector and before Tarkon knew it, the armoured prow lanced into the upper hull of the behemoth amidships. The explosion was epic in proportion, the flames of the expanding fireball cast the Beast's shadow across the Justice of Terra, but amazingly the Tyranid seeding ship came out in tact.

Tarkon brought the Justice of Terra around. Scanning information, transmitted to the Justice from ships on the other side of the Beast, told him that the impact had smashed a massive hole in the armoured upper hull of the enemy. It was wounded. Now Tarkon had to make sure they used this to their advantage. The mighty cruiser rose into an attack run that would bring her dangerously close to the creature, but which would give Tarkon a clean shot at the Tyranid's new-made weak spot.

The Stormchild's sacrifice would not be in vain.


	16. Paring the Void

He was raising the stakes on a Damsel high straight. The pot was up to eight hundred seventy five credits. Only Pars had the gumption to stay in the game against Corgan's ice-cold poker face, but he'd always be the bluffster. His only "tell" was a moment's hesitation before he reached for his creds to call…

Vaughn came into the room in a hurry, approaching the table and stooping to speak into Corgan's ear.

'It's time,' he said, before straightening up.

Corgan sighed heavily.

'Well, I could sit here and take your money all day, gentlemen, but it looks like this is our last hand,' he announced.

'Praise be…' Shopal cried. He'd already lost most of a month's pay to Corgan's card-sharps.

'What have you got, grinning-boy?'

Pars obliged by showing all his teeth as he placed two pairs on the table.

'High Lords over Cardinals, Major. How'd you like them apples?'

'I'd like them well enough on any other day,' Corgan replied, tossing his hand down flippantly. 'I hope you were planning on sleeping alone tonight…'

Pars shrugged nonchalantly.

'I knew I should have cheated…'

'With any other opponent, it might have worked. Thanks for a very profitable morning, gents. Now saddle up, we've got some real work to do.'

'Uh, about that,' Shopal broke in, displaying uncharacteristic nervousness as he drew Corgan aside and lowered his voice. 'I've been meaning to ask you if I could hand in my stripes…'

'What?' Corgan was incredulous.

'They don't sit well on my sleeve, boss…'

'I can't believe you left it till now to bring this up. Where the hell am I gonna find a suitable replacement this close to a major operation? No, those stripes stay where they are for now. We'll talk about this later, if we survive…'

xxx

The hive-ship's plasma fire intensified as the Justice parted the void in her direction. As if sensing bigger prey she heeled around to bring her port-side batteries to bear. Tarkon corrected course, engaging in a game of cat-and-mouse.

He signalled the Epsilon wing, still four cobras strong. As the hive-ship turned to avoid giving the Justice a clear shot, it exposed itself to the torpedo boats coming in on a new vector. The wing-leader reported five direct hits on the wound. Tarkon's plan appeared to be working.

The Justice was a powerful vessel, but she was primarily a carrier ship. Her weapons batteries, though vast, were not her greatest asset. The Norn-Queen didn't know this. To her, the Justice was the greatest potential threat simply because of its size and so she would fight to avoid giving her a clean broadside. This distraction would give the smaller, faster and more manoeuvrable vessels breathing space and opportunity to do what the Justice could not.

He only wondered how long it would be before the Beast adapted to this strategy. He knew he had to make it count.

As he was signalling the rest of the flotilla to outline his plan, the loss of concentration caused him to make a potentially fatal error. The seeding ship launched a hail of mycetic torpedoes directly into the Justice's path.

The pain of multiple impacts ripped through Tarkon's consciousness. Reports of hull breaches and boarding parties buzzed in the back of his head. Suddenly and without warning, the crew of the Justice of Terra were fighting for their lives at close quarters.

Tarkon was dimly aware of his teeth gnashing in frustration… they had been so close…

xxx

Corgan had mobilised the entirety of Argo Company for the take-down operation. Eleven veteran squads saturated the neighbourhood surrounding their target. Four more rolled straight up to it in their snub-nosed Chimera APC's. They debarked at the foot of the steps in front of the local basilica. It was small and poky compared to most, not even a decade old. It didn't have the austere magnificence that was the trademark of the Ministorum.

Corgan led his own squad right up to the front door with Vaughn in tow while the other three squads deployed quickly around the sides of the building. Frocar had left the company standard at the barracks and carried his bulky hot-shot in both hands, flanked by Perri and Colcha, who carried Wheln's vox-set on his back.

Putting thoughts of his adjutant to the back of his mind, he pushed the massive doors open and entered the church's antechamber.

The nave beyond was wreathed in flickering shadows cast by the light of two hundred candles lining the aisle. The iron-wrought candlesticks on the end of every row of pews were each caked in drooling wax. The alcoves that lined the walls were dark and forbidding and could have concealed any number of foes.

A small congregation was in attendance, presided over by a tall, emaciated priest who had pride of place on the tall rostrum, carved in the shape of the Aquila ascendant. A few heads turned as Corgan's squad split up to cover the three aisles. Frocar and Perri moved sweep the left-most aisle and the alcoves along the wall, while Jelod and Farls took the right.

The priest noticed them at last, as if waking from a trance of religious fervour. He raised his voice and hands in outrage.

'What is the meaning of this intrusion?' he cried, his deep baritone filling the nave with rich, rolling tones. 'Why do you enter the house of the Emperor, garbed and ready for war?'

'Forgive us, father,' Corgan replied, sounding less than penitent. 'But we have reason to believe that not everything here is as it seems.'

As he finished, Lita's squad entered the church through the small door in the western chapel. Darron's squad entered from the east. Both units commenced a comprehensive sweep of the smaller annexes, linking up with the elements of Corgan's squad. Shopal's men had to smash their way in through the rectory door at the rear, but they weren't to be dissuaded and before long they filtered up the narrow stairway from the back-street below.

With all the exits covered, the shepherd and his flock were well and truly in the fold. Corgan turned to Vaughn.

'Over to you, Commissar.'

Vaughn stepped forward, issuing orders to the men and women of Argo Company with all the authority of the Commissariat.

'Take them in hand!'

Fifteen men stepped forward to grab the congregation bodily and make them stand in-line at the front. Frocar himself brought the priest down from his place of honour, treating him with the same care he would with a saintly relic. They were hand-cuffed, one and all, black cloth bags were put over their heads. The irony of the arrest was not lost on Corgan, especially after Lieutenant Commander Rhodes' recent reminder that his men were all convicted criminals. Some of them were grinning at the reversal in their fortunes.

Vaughn moved along behind the line, lifting hoods and pulling back collars to get at the back of each individual's neck. He was ready with a hypo-syringe, not having forgotten the exploding heads incident last time he'd encountered hostile cultists. Corgan walked with him, watching for the tell-tale blue tinge to the skin, not to mention signs of the hideous parasite Vaughn had described to him en route.

The fifth man in line tried to get away before they got there. Shopal brought him to the ground with a roundhouse punch that laid him out. Vaughn hastily administered the strong sedative injection and checked his neck.

'This man is under arrest. Put him in the APC.'

They moved on. Vaughn slotted a new cylinder into the syringe, but the rest of the line was clean.

Frocar brought the priest forward and Vaughn tugged at the laces in his rough cassock to get at his neck. With a sudden lurch the priest bolted, pulling himself free of Frocar's grip and darting between two of the members of his congregation to hare off down central aisle. His movements were forced and jerky, almost as if the parasite at his neck had taken direct control and wasn't sure of how to articulate a human body. But he was quick and he seemed to be able to sense exactly where the obstacles were as if he could actually see.

'I want him alive!' Vaughn screamed, bolting after the scrawny man. Jelod got there first and got a forehead to the face to for his efforts, but he managed to knock the man flying, crashing into the pews where Farls and another man were able to subdue him.

Vaughn dived on top of the flailing heap to give the suspect a shot and the man's thrashing quickly died away. Rolling onto his buttocks the young Commissar wiped the sweat from his brow. He still wasn't up to this kind of exertion.

'I take it we won't be seeing any exploding heads today?' Corgan asked, helping Vaughn back to his feet.

'I can't promise it.' Vaughn replied. 'The Adepta Medicae haven't finished their deliberations on what caused the incident before. They reasoned that it must be the parasites, but there is so little we understand of how these cults work. They're hoping we'll be able to learn much if we are able to capture some alive. This formulation was their best guess at a preventative measure. It remains to be seen whether it works or not.'

'Okay. Well, what shall we do with the rest of them?'

'Load them into the other transports with the men. We'll have to interrogate them all to determine any potential complicity. Keep their heads covered and gag anyone that tries to speak. I don't want them interacting with each other in any way.'

Corgan nodded at Shopal to carry out the order.

'It's gonna get pretty cosy in those tin-cans!' he remarked, waving Darron and Lita over.

'Phase two.' He said. 'I want your squads to stay here. Turn the place over for any evidence of unauthorised use and leave no corpse unturned. You find anything nasty, Alecs is just down the street on call and he can co-ordinate the other squads in the surrounding area. Got it?'

'Sir!'

Corgan moved out onto the porch to oversee the loading of the prisoners. A couple of troopers from Shopal's unit sidled past him, carefully angling their bodies away from him as they headed for their transport.

'You there!' Corgan called after them. The two men pretended not to hear him but Frocar, who was already down near the transports had looked up at his call. Corgan indicated the pair and the sergeant homed in on them like a missile.

'Front and centre!' he bellowed. Corgan had once thought the man slight and unassuming, unable to intimidate a kitten, let alone the kind of hardened criminals that wound deported to Orrax. He'd changed on Pelloris Ridge. He'd grown larger than his physical frame throughout the campaign to liberate Five Rivers. Now he was as frightening as any stereotypical drill sergeant when he raised his voice. It was strange what war did to people.

The two men came to surprised attention, dropping the sack cloth bundles they'd been carrying as their arms clamped automatically to their sides. Corgan arrived on the scene and unwrapped one of the packages to reveal a pair of thick, gold candlesticks and a silver, jewel-encrusted chalice.

'Just as I thought. Now, if you're going to engage in looting you could at least be a bit more subtle about it, boys.' He turned to Frocar, whose face was nearly purple with outrage. He'd become the regiment's unsanctioned padre, appointed-by-the-masses because of his religious convictions. To see the men stealing from the Emperor's house was the gravest of insults, to his way of thinking. Corgan suppressed a smirk.

'Sergeant, I trust you'll carry out some suitable form of punishment for these men and return their stolen goods to the rightful place. Dismissed.'

Vaughn moved down the steps towards him.

'What was all that about?' he asked.

'Nothing you need worry about, Commissar, it's been handled. Get to your tread. Phase two starts now.'

He turned away and headed for the second Chimera in the line, summoning up his best battle-field roar.

'Saddle up!'

The low growl of the Imperial Guards ubiquitous transport rumbled from the façade of the basilica as the strike team rolled out.

xxx

Brady fell on his backside as the deck lurched underfoot.

'That was no plasma barrage,' he cried as one of his men helped him to his feet. The deck rippled again, violently. 'It's not splash-back wreckage either.'

All of a sudden the loud-hailer emitted a deep-throated roar of rage and frustration. The Captain's outburst caused loud-hailers throughout the ship to explode. It was a morale-crushing sound. Brady moved to the nearest intra-vox node and put out a general hail. Within seconds sergeant Holst had answered from his position in the starboard engine compartment.

'Lieutenant Brady, am I glad to hear your voice. I can't raise any of the port bow teams…'

'Take it easy, Holst. I can't tell for sure but I think we've been boarded. The Captain was half expecting it to happen. I need you to stay put and make sure they don't get in to disable the plasma-core. If they do, we're all dead, you hear?'

'Yessir, not one alien bastard sets foot in engineering without a bullet through the eye!'

Holst broke the connection and Brady waited precious moments for the starboard teams to check in.

'Alright, we've got boarders on the port side. As far as we know they're isolated on the flight decks but we need to confirm that this is the case and if not, make it so, understood?'

A round of ayes came back.

'Okay, I want you all to move into the spinal sections, sealing the starboard compartments behind you and setting up barricades and sentries on the major junctions. The port-side teams may have been forced back into these corridors already so stay sharp. Once you've got your defences placed, move up to seal the flight-deck bulkheads, relieving any survivors you can. Be ruthless about it, if men have to die to ensure the security of the ship, then so be it. Understood?'

These men knew their jobs. They knew that if the same thing happened to them, not one of the port-side sergeants would hesitate to lock them out on the wrong side of safety. You didn't get to be a security platoon-leader on a capital ship without that ruthless streak.

'Sir, if we put emergency seals in place we won't be able to double back in any kind of a hurry…'

'That's understood, sergeant. If they board us on both sides, we're screwed! I want everyone fighting on the port bow. If I'm wrong, we should have plenty time to open up those hatches. If I'm right, we might just be saving the ship. Get to it!'

He waited for several more precious moments as they acknowledged the order by turns. As he turned away from the vox-set sergeant Kole had arrived with the rest of the platoon.

'Vellori and Fornost have reported in, Lieutenant, they're moving aft on the other two gun decks.'

'Good. I want Hellebor to split his men three ways and keep the bulkheads open behind us. That way we can stage a fighting retreat if we have to. If we can't retake the flight decks, we might be able to seal them in and vent them into space. Come on!'

Racking his bulky shotgun he led the platoon aft. The flight decks were the most vulnerable part of a carrier class ship. Not only did they have less hard-shielding, they were also open ground for the most part, difficult to defend. An enemy landing there in force would sweep the defenders before them, he only hoped they hadn't penetrated any of the other compartments.

The gunnery crews looked their way as they passed by, flitting nervous glances at the massed security platoon. They knew the significance of what they were seeing and it scared them. Well, that was the Gunnery Officer's problem now, Brady had more important work to do.

xxx

Tarkon yawed heavily to port, trying to straighten up behind the fleeing hive-ship and struggling. Several of the port-side attitude thrusters were out of action meaning he had less capacity to compensate. He could feel the boarding parties seething through the flight decks like a disease infecting his veins. Even as his security forces rushed to counter the threat, he realised there was little he could do to help them. He had to use whatever time he had left to bring an end to the Beast.

The prow cannon lined up nicely on the hive-ship. The weapon had not been used in a decade, but the crew was unhurried and unmolested. All they were waiting for was the order.

Tarkon gave it.

The recoil sapped away some of his forward momentum and the prow pulled slightly to starboard, but the nova cannon fired true, blasting a great chunk from the Beast's engine section. The Norn-Queen reeled with the impact.

'You're hurting now, aren't you, bitch!' Tarkon bellowed. 'I've got more where that came from.'

The hive ship pitched and rolled in a desperate attempt to avoid the well-timed lance-strikes of the Firestorm squadron and to escape the Justice. Her return fire had died away to a pitiful spread that grazed one of the ships but troubled them not at all. The lances scored her underside and tore a chunk from one of the writhing tentacles. Tarkon kept his prow glued to her aft quarters as best he could, though he'd lost enough manoeuvrability for her to out-stretch his Nova Cannon's fire-arc. There would be chances yet. He schooled himself to patience.

xxx

Flight deck two was overrun. Four mycetic spores had penetrated the outer hull, another three clung limpet-like to the flanks of the Justice of Terra while the Cutterfexes worked to make holes in the metres-thick adamantium shielding.

The port-side security teams fought like hellions to repel the boarders, but the element of surprise was against them. They'd had no warning and two of the platoons had been caught in the open. Less than four of the original fifty men made it to the defensive barricades that lined the outside of the spinal bulkheads.

The spores had broken open to spill scores of Genestealers and Gaunts into the belly of the Justice. They sliced into the deck-crew with alien fervour, spilling guts and slicing through bone with their razor-sharp rending claws. Behind them came the Cutterfexes, a Carnifex variant specially adapted to boarding enemy ships. The lower pair of arms invariably melded into a powerful plasma cutting torch while the upper pair took a variety of forms, from scything talons to twin devourers. They would be limited to the broader concourses and arterial corridors because of their bulk, but that wouldn't be a problem on a ship the size of the Justice of Terra.

As deadly as the Genestealer was, it was the Cutterfexes that posed the greater threat. It would take the former hours if not days to bash through some of the thicker bulkheads, while the latter could go through them in minutes.

Even though they realised this, there was very little the security forces could do against these massive brutes. Their basic weaponry was limited to large-bore shotguns that posed no risk to the outer hull. Even the Genestealers were frustratingly resilient against these weapons, but the Cutterfexes were damn-near invulnerable to them.

While they fought in the outer compartments, all they could really hope to do was slow the boarders down and strip away the smaller breeds. Even that was fairly hopeless. The Genestealers were tough and fast, with deadly claws that could slice a carapace-armoured man's torso in two pieces.

The Gaunts were quick and wily, but without synapse creatures to bolster their courage, they were more easily staved off. The danger they posed was that they were often small enough to infest the capillaries of a capital ship, the ventilation tunnels that interconnected the ship's anatomical parts like an insect's spiracles. Using these they could bypass the major bulkheads before the security teams had chance to seal them. They weren't intelligent enough to open them again, but they would cause havoc among the defenders, striking from hiding as the Cutterfexes burnt through.

Faced with a high proportion of 'stealers, the port-side teams didn't stand the slightest chance. Before three minutes had passed the barricades were overrun and the security men were reduced to close-quarters fighting. Man-to-Genestealer combat was invariably one sided.

One of the deck crew, operating a bipedal heavy lifter when the spores broke through, managed to crush a Cutterfex and three 'stealers before being peeled out of his cockpit. Three security personnel gave their lives valiantly, using a commandeered plasma-welding torch to slice another brute's plasma sacs open. The explosion tore a swathe through the boarding party and could have ruptured the hull. They got lucky on that score.

Brady's arrival on the flight deck barely caused the 'nids an itch. His twenty five men fought tooth and claw to link up with the port-side survivors, but there were pitifully few of them.

He got as many of them as he could into the narrower, more defensible crew quarters, forward of the flight decks and ordered the bulkhead sealed.

'That won't hold them for long,' he panted, wiping a slick of alien blood from his cheek using the back of his hand. 'Kole, I want you to take ten men and break into the Munitorum stores. We need bigger guns!'

Kole selected his men and headed off. Brady turned to another corpsman, wide-eyed and pale, gripping his shotgun in claw-like hands.

'Calm down, kid. This isn't over yet and I need you to find the nearest intra-vox and keep me informed about what's happening in the spinal sections. Get to it.'

The spinal section was a narrow core of offices, stores, workshops and officer's quarters that ran more or less bow to stern through the centre of the ship. They separated the starboard compartments from the port-side. You couldn't get from one side to the other without passing through this often narrow and congested part of the ship. The only major cross-over points, those designed to allow heavy stores and equipment to be moved from one side to the other, were so heavy that even the Cutterfexes would have difficulty getting through. These had been automatically sealed when general quarters were sounded as a matter of protocol.

This arrangement limited the 'nids to the narrower by-ways and a few broader concourses, meaning the security personnel could force them into bottle-necks. If they could also get their hands on some heavy-duty weaponry, they might be able to stymie the assault.

It was a slim hope, but they'd won through before on slimmer.

It was a shame about the port-side teams. Brady had lost some good men there, Sergeant Gaston among them. He'd come up through the academy with Gaston, eaten dinner at his parents' house when they went home on leave. But those were the breaks, and if he survived he had no doubt he'd be writing more than a few letters home.

Briefly, his thoughts came to light on his own family. Tildie and the babes, back home on Cypra Mundi, living with his parents. He hadn't seen them in two years.

When it came down to brass tacks there was no ignoring the fact that this was the kind of "situation" that made men dead. It made Brady's guts cold to imagine himself in Gaston's shoes. He was probably lying in pieces, or perhaps they'd just slashed open and left him to bleed out, writhing in agony and crying out for his mother. It would be hard writing to his mother…

Snapping back to the present he swept his homesickness aside. It didn't help to get subjective about these things in the middle of a situation like this. He took a moment to allow the void into his soul, rendering him cold and solitary, like the Justice, paring the vacuum with her blade-like prow.

A thought ventured into the emptiness of his mind, bringing him back down to the cold, hard deck with a new determination.

Slim hopes called for drastic measures!


	17. At the Brink

'Something's not right,' hissed Olafs.

The inside man had been adamant that the prisoners were being kept in this building. The amount of guards patrolling the grounds certainly seemed to bear him out. But although the lights were on, there was nobody home.

Entering via the basement through one of a thousand cunningly disguised tunnels riddling the foundations of Gurshun, Olafs and his fellow infiltrators had expected to have to slit a few throats. In reality, the halls were deserted.

It stank of a trap.

If Olafs' symbiote hadn't been able to sense the proximity of the Reverend's own parasite, he would have melted back into the tunnels without a second thought. But he'd known since he broke the tunnel's seal. The brain-leech had not the faintest doubt that the priest was alive and that he was inside this building.

He led the party up the darkened stairwell and out into a whitewashed corridor. Silence enveloped them and the shadows sheltered their trespass. His three fellows were, as he was, third level initiates in the cult. Their skin was almost entirely blue, their eyes yellow. One had grown a third arm, tipped with razor sharp claws similar to those of a Genestealer, another had cloven hooves of soft chitin and triple-jointed legs.

Olafs himself was completely hairless, but the remainder of his stigmata was concealed under the rags he wore. His torso and pelvis were both encased in a chtitinous exo-skeleton, making him tougher than the average man. Other than this, only his blue skin and slotted yellow eyes betrayed his allegiance to the Great Devourer.

The party moved stealthily down a dim-lit corridor, quickly picking up a pheromone trail left by the priest. Olafs' snub-nosed repeater pistol was a comforting, weighty presence clutched in his blue fingers. Soundlessly, they closed with the quarry, coming to a large metal door. Beyond it was the maintenance annex, a large room that would house the incoming utility pipes for water, gas and electricity as well as the main boiler that heated the tenement's water.

'Stack up!' Olafs hissed to his fellows. They took up positions either side of the door. Petry reached out and carefully depressed the handle while Olafs prepared to kick it open.

With a surge the team smashed through the portal, sweeping the room with their autopistols. As they passed through the door all that greeted them was a snap and a hissing sound as two canisters over the door popped open and started to decompress, spraying the party with a clear mist that quickly soaked through their ragged garments and chilled their alien skin.

'What the frak!' Olafs cried, stifling the rest of his exclamation as he remembered that this was supposed to be a stealth mission. 'What trickery is this?' he hissed. His fellows just shrugged. The liquid brought tears to their eyes and stung their skin, but other than this had little effect on them.

'It's nerve gas,' Petry elaborated. 'I recognise the smell.'

'Hmmm, they wanted to knock us out, but it looks like we're resistant,' Olafs replied. 'Come on, we don't have much time…'

The Reverend had been stuffed into a maintenance closet amongst the brooms and mops of the janitor's trade. They quickly broke him out and carried him out into the corridor.

'No time for secondary objectives, they'll have to fend for themselves. Let's get out of here.'

xxx

Corgan arrived on the scene with his emergency response team, maintaining the pretence that he actually gave a damn about the priest.

'You got a fix?' he asked. Biggs was scanning the corridor with a hand-held snooper set.

'Affirmative, solid trace. We have about two hours before it degrades.'

'Alright, someone raise the alarm.'

Biggs relayed the order through his bead and the compound outside became a kicked up beehive of activity. Floodlights snapped on and search parties started quartering the locale. It was all for show. Daedalus Company would ensure that the cultists didn't dare to emerge from their hideouts for a while.

Five more squads from Argo Company arrived within a minute of the alarm being raised. The Commissar was with them.

'Are you sure you're up to this?' Corgan asked.

'You're not going down there without me…'

'I'm not going to order you to stay behind, Vaughn, but I'm not going to baby-sit you down there either. Consider carefully. I'd hate to have to break in a new black-top!'

'Your comments are duly noted, Major.' Vaughn hissed, resentful of the Major's implication. 'Nevertheless, I will be involved in this prosecution.'

'Very well.' Unperturbed, Corgan turned to the veteran cadre, taking the large-bore twelve-gauge shotgun Frocar handed out to him. 'Alright, ladies, lock and load. Let's go put a few holes in these deviant, outer rim, sons-of-yokels!'

xxx

The Tyranid boarders penetrated the spinal quarters within minutes of overrunning the flight deck. Smaller bio-forms swarmed down into the hangar ramps into the belly of the Justice where the fighter and bomber wings were stored. There was no one down there but they'd quickly get into the ventilation systems from there. The larger forms including fifteen Cutterfexes and about two hundred Genestealers burned their way into the narrower confines of the spine.

Sergeant Hekassa's platoon was the first of the starboard teams to lock horns with the foe. His men pumped shot after shot into the mass of Tyranid flesh as it surged into the compartment. The Cutterfex that had burnt through the door went into a frenzy, barrelling forward into the hastily erected barricades his men sheltered behind.

The sheer weight of the beast crushed three of his men. Hekassa tossed his shotgun down and drew his chainsword, ducking to one side as the beast crested a wave of startled humanity. As it came level with him, he charged forward, driving the sword into the thing's plasma-sacs.

The Cutterfex exploded. The coruscating waves of plasma killed Hekassa and his entire platoon. It also burned out three adjacent compartments and took out the floors and ceilings of those above and below. The blast also served to kill almost three score of the bio-engineered aggressors.

Seven compartments aft, Sergeant Graed pulled his men back, bulkhead by bulkhead. Most of the cutters had diverted to the forward sections, but a tide of 'stealers washed over the barricades like a tidal wave. Half his 'toon was reduced to meat in less that ten seconds, the trade-off was a mere three 'stealers.

Graed managed to get the rest behind a closed bulkhead and for the first time since engaging they felt they could breath. Then the 'nids were on them again. The ventilation covers all around them exploded outward, spewing Gaunts right into their midst.

The platoon died, some of them to friendly cross-fire. The rest were chewed from the inside by borer beetles or eviscerated by venomous spines or simply clawed to death. Three minutes later, as sergeant Foley moved up into Graed's last-known position, there was no sign of the 'nids except for the charnel slaughter. By that time there was a cutter on the other side of the bulkhead so they fell back, leaving their dead where they lay scattered.

Ten minutes later, sergeant Holst dashed tears from his eyes as the pounding on the engineering bulkheads faded into the screams of dying men. Foley had known the deal. There was no way Holst could open those doors, not even if the Captain himself ordered it. He avoided looking into the eyes of his men. They were all drawn and pale paced. Bolber was puking in a corner. The waiting was taking its toll. But it wouldn't be long now…

xxx

Sergeant Vellori edged out onto the narrow gantry, high above the flight deck. Behind him, his platoon fanned out to cover the other egress routes along the massive bulkhead. Bali and Kraeg followed him out, watchful for nid's on the network of maintenance walkways suspended from the upper hull of the Justice's flight decks.

The 'nids swarmed across the broad concourse, finally disgorged from the mycetic pods that had penetrated the hull. They gathered around the cutterfexes who even now were trying to cut their way through to the starboard side. Vellori hoped that the thickness of the emergency bulkhead would be proof against their plasma cutters.

Thankfully, they'd not started to tackle the lesser doorways yet. Nor had they bothered with the upper gantries. Only the smaller breeds would be able to get up here anyway and they weren't capable of breaking through the bulkhead doors.

'Gantry's clear but it won't stay that way for long. Come on.'

He broke into a run, clattering along the narrow walkway towards the auxiliary control tower with three of his men in tow. The rest of his platoon stayed behind to guard the bulkhead and the gantry.

He dropped into the command seat and picked up the intra-vox, punching in Bradie's code.

xxx

'I don't care about protocol, you jumped up little shit! I want you to route the override codes to the auxiliary tower and I want you to do it now…'

'Lieutenant, I don't think you quite understand the risks…'

'I think I understand the risks a damn sight better than you, officer! My crew in engineering have reported hearing screams on the other side of the bulkheads. It won't be long before the 'nids burn through and then your bleeding protocols will see us all dead… DO IT, NOW!'

He cut the connection, muttering half-thought-of prayers to the Emperor of Mankind as he willed them to do as he asked.

xxx

Vellori cast his eyes over the display. Suddenly the flickering reds lights turned green for an instant, before most of them flashed to amber, indicating breaches and highlighting areas at risk.

'Oh this is bad!' he groaned, picking up the vox. Bradie was on the other end in an instant.

'Report!'

'We've got multiple breaches, including sections seven through nineteen, but that's not the worst. Sergeant Gorsh needs to seal his area off or we'll lose the entire spinal section. So far engineering is structurally sound.'

'Thanks for the heads up, sergeant! I'll move in to support Gorsh. As soon as you see the green light, you have my clearance to hit the big red button.'

He replaced the horn none-too-gently.

'This would be a really good time for Kole to get back with those heavy guns

xxx

The Orrax first company closed around the cultists in a vice like grip. The unwitting mutants led them straight to the heart of the cult's underground lair, through narrow tunnels filled with the rill of underground streams. The speed of their pursuit caught the pickets off guard and rolled over them with a minimum of fuss, ripping deviant cultists apart in disciplined volleys of hellgun las.

The ruckus brought cultist response teams running, but they withered before the storm-troop's onslaught and melted away. Before long, Corgan's troops had emerged into a vast underground cavern, partly created by the underground waterways that echoed from the walls that had been carved out to make a suitable hub for the cult's operations.

The chasm was deep, the walls carved into spiralling stairways and broad ledges piled with supplies. The cultists mounted a desperate defence, throwing packing crates across walkways to form makeshift barricades. But they were too few, their weapons and armour too outmoded. The only thing they had in their favour was the alien ferocity driving them to buy time for their master to escape.

'Spread out and start sealing the tunnels,' Corgan bellowed, 'I want the Patriarch!'

The Orrax poured from the tunnel and surged onto the stairways and ledges, winkling cultists out of their positions with pin-point blasts of burning energy as they occupied the cavern. Corgan led the charge down into the bowels of the cave, homing in on the deep-throated bellowing of something big.

Hard rounds pinged from the walls all around as a mass of cultists charged up at them. The return volley cut them down in swathes, sending them toppling hundreds of metres to the floor of the chamber. One of Corgan's men took the brunt of a heavy stubber, his armour disintegrating and his lungs imploding as he dived, end over end, to smash on the shallow stream bed below. But the Orrax were like a force of nature, implacable, unstoppable. The tension that had been building in them since the battle of Gurshun was given vent in their fury… their relentless prosecution of the heretic, deviant scum.

They reached the floor of the chamber. The tunnels nearest the foot of the stair belched clouds of rock-dust as krak charges went off, plugging potential egress routes and covering Argo Company's back.

The noise down here was phenomenal, surging like the tides against the cliffs of a sheltered bay, battering the walls of the cavern. Screams blended with the snap-crack of hellgun discharge. Deep-throated stubber fire complemented the staccato popping of autoguns. The roar of frag detonations blended the whole into a living entity of sound that closed over them, enveloped them and soaked them to the bone.

The cultists seemed innumerable down here, but they were different. Where before they had faced men with extra arms, blue-tinged skin and other xenos features, humanoids that were still vaguely recognisable as such. Now they came up against the dregs, those that had not responded well to the mutagenic chemicals infusing their bodies. They were twisted creatures, more animal than man, many limbed, sharp-clawed, wearing skeletal constructs on the outside. Tongues lolled from distended, needle-toothed jaws, dripping with corrosive slime.

The fighting quickly came down to hand-to-hand. Corgan had his short-pattern power sword in his right fist, one of his hellpistols in the left. Both were employed to bring peace to the misguided, mutated horde that came against him. With swift, economical movements he used both weapons in tandem, bringing down foe after foe, incapacitating or killing with each slash, thrust and blast.

His fire team filled the gap he created, filtering through behind him, using bayonets and hellguns at point blank and saving Corgan's life innumerable times. Several went down themselves, dragged down by sharp-clawed mutants or knocked off their feet by the occasional close-range blast of percussive fire. But there were always more men behind them to fill the gap. The Orrax were not to be denied.

The bellowing of the Genefather drew Corgan on, fuelling his determination to finish this abomination. As they drew closer, the twisted parodies of pure-strain Tyranids began to fall back. Whether in dismay or because they were instructed to was not clear, at first.

Then the Genestealers arrived. Two of them. They were so fast. Hellguns lanced out at them, scoring them in places but for the most part missing completely. They hit the Orrax line and started cutting them apart.

Corgan reacted almost as fast, homing in on the obese, grinning demagogue, ensconced in his palanquin. The brute lashed out with a massive claw but Corgan was quicker and lopped it off at the elbow joint, evincing a scream of rage and pain that immediately drew the attention of the Genestealers.

They turned, fixing their malevolent intentions on the threat to the cult's leadership. The distraction was long enough to bring one of them down with a well-placed plasma blast. The other charged Corgan down, stepping over a krak grenade he'd prepared for that very purpose. The blast went off a fraction of a second later than he had hoped, rocking it from its feet and throwing it forward onto the tip of Corgan's power-blade.

A razor-sharp claw opened Corgan's left cheek, narrowly missing his eye. Pain lanced through him and he let go of the grip of his sword, shoving the 'stealer back and retreating as it clambered back to its cloven feet.

Half-blind and almost paralysed by pain, Corgan raised his hellpistol, drilling a hole through the creature's forehead and boiling its brain with a bolt of super-heated energy. With a final flurry of lethal-clawed limbs the monster flopped back to the ground and fell still.

Corgan collapsed to his backside as Argo Company surged around him, launching themselves at the remaining cultists and driving them back into their tunnels. A medic came and poured brown disinfectant over his wound before gently teasing the flap of Corgan's cheek back into place. He administered a small dose of local anaesthetic and bound a wad of gauze over the gash, completely covering the left side of his face.

'You're gonna have a nasty scar, there, boss!' the man grinned. 'Else you'll be fine.'

Corgan grunted his thanks as he turned to survey the chamber with his single uncovered eye. Pale-faced Vaughn was co-ordinating a fire-team in securing the Genefather, whose incomprehensible bellowing still echoed from the walls of the cavern. The outer tunnels were being sealed where possible, plugged with manpower elsewhere.

The Genestealer Cult was beaten.

xxx

Sergeant Gorsh had his back to the bulkhead. His platoon had been decimated and the infestation was continuing to chew his men up. They'd lost three compartments in the last fifteen minutes and eight men had been left behind. Several others had venom burns or superficial wounds. Any wound that was even slightly incapacitating was a death wound in this running brawl. There simply wasn't time to help the walking wounded. It was every man for himself.

Now they hung on the brink of losing a vital intersection that would allow the 'nids to spread throughout the spinal sections. If they were forced back, the ship was lost. He could only hope that Bradie was aware of the situation, because he would have no opportunity to call it in.

Three more of his men were sprayed with acidic gore as a Cutterfex's plasma-sacs exploded. He caught a spattering of it himself across his right cheek and the stink of his own cooking flesh assaulted his nostrils. Strange that he should notice this even through the scorching pain.

Something hit him hard in the midriff and he went down. Clawed feet pressed him down into the deck, knocking the wind out of him. He forced himself up onto his knees, buffeted by the press of hapless xenos. A Gaunt reared up before him, raising its bio-engineered weapon to cut him down. He lunged at it, grappled it underneath him. Its teeth sank into the meat of his shoulder and he squealed as the bones grounds together. He bashed its head mercilessly into the deck, spilling viscous brain-matter.

Slipping on the gore of his foe he stood, glancing around him for any sign of resistance. He was alone. Tyranid bio-forms surrounded him, grinning at him as they waited for the moment of the kill.

Gorsh's stomach dropped, his heart pounded with the realisation of his impending doom. The universe shrank around him.

Suddenly the grinding of a bulkhead opening rang out, drawing the attention of Gorsh's malevolent audience. A wall of narrow laser beams burst from the aperture and three hulking profiles moved into the intersection. Gorsh hit the deck again, voluntarily this time, as the combat servitors marched implacably into the throng.

Each of the servitors' arms had been replaced with a rotating digi-laser array, with power feed snaking back to the massive power-packs strapped to their augmented frames.

Virtually mindless, the servitors were driving the Tyranid menace back, debilitating them in droves. The digi-laser was a miniaturised version of the standard pattern lasgun, under-powered, but making up for that lack with a massive rate of fire. The cavalcade of energy pulses sliced into the Gaunts and Geanestealers, inflicting hundreds and thousands of burns, grazes and cuts, enough to incapacitate them and allowing the security personnel moving up behind them to finish the job.

Gorsh was hauled to his feet as the melee passed him by. The visual recognition patterns written into the servitors' brain waves, in combination with his quick thinking dive had saved his life.

Lieutenant Bradie slapped him heartily on the shoulder.

'You're one lucky fellow, sergeant. Kole found these little beauties in stasis down in the armouries. They must have been down there for decades, centuries even.'

'If only we'd known about them sooner, eh?' Gorsh replied, casting regretful eyes over the broken corpses of his platoon.

'Mourn them later. We've got more work to do before we can rest.'

Kole doubled back from the business end of the combat.

'The servitors have done the job, Lieutenant. Bulkhead's sealed behind them, they'll keep going until they run out of las.'

'Great news, I'll get on the intravox.'

xxx

The Justice of Terras heeled about, hot on the trail of the hive ship, guns roaring in silence. The massive nova cannon let rip again, smashing chunks from the Norn Queen's engine section. The left flank, puckered and scored by the mycetic torpedoes, flickered with internal fires and escaped electrical discharge that could have powered a hive city for a month. Several of the holes vented streams of air into space, water droplets formed and froze instantaneously, injecting clouds of snow and ice into the capital ship's wake.

Suddenly the shower of ice intensified with such magnitude that the massive vessel was shunted off course. The launch tubes belched atmosphere into the void along with showers of miniscule biological organisms. Like the atmosphere itself, these organisms froze so suddenly that they burst in a thousand little explosions.

The geyser lasted only a few brief seconds before petering out and leaving the Justice hanging in virtual silence, almost as though in shock. Then the guns opened up again, tracking to new targeting vectors and continuing the eternal conflict amidst the stars.

But she was gravely wounded. Limping. Even the uninitiated would have given her long odds on being able to bring the Tyranid behemoth to heel.


	18. Drop Zone

'What am I going to do with you?'

Corgan didn't pace. His agitation was expressed through an unnerving stillness, a lingering, ice-cold stare that pinned Shopal to his chair.

The wound dressings were gone. His cheek was a vivid purple, distorted by the ugly black stitches holding his face together. It would leave a long, vertical scar, but the slice had been clean. It would lend his features that little bit more menace, enhancing his rugged good looks rather than spoiling them.

'Do you have any idea what kind of message I'll be sending out if I demote you for no apparent reason? Do you understand the implications of such an action?'

Shopal stared at the floor, his cheeks flushed with shame.

'You don't show weakness,' Corgan continued, relentless. 'The weak don't last long in this regiment, or hadn't you noticed?'

'I'm not a weak soldier, Corgan, just a weak leader!' Shopal blurted out, looking up with defiance burning bright in his dark brown eyes.

Corgan didn't reply. He let the silence drag out, but Shopal wasn't budging. Corgan didn't believe in making rash decisions. Quick thinking was a requirement in a combat situation, but he'd learned to trust to his instincts in those situations. The rest of the time, his decisions were always well thought out and he never went back on them until he ran out of alternatives. He needed to be sure of Shopal's decision.

'This Pardus Officer you struck… they're crying out for blood!'

The atmosphere in the room thickened a touch, Shopal wouldn't meet Corgan's eyes. With all he'd seen of his commanding officer, there would always be that grain of doubt. Would he dispose of his "friend" with the same efficient coldness he'd employed in the past.

'You certainly didn't do anything to improve the regiment's image, but since when have any of us given a damn about appearances. But I have to give them something, so I've decided to strip you of your rank.'

Shopal grinned, some of his old self slipping back to the surface.

'I think it's only fair, sir, under the circumstances, Major.'

'Get out of my sight!'

xxx

The hardpan vibrated with the thundering of armoured boots. The quaking transmitted up through Corgan's boot-soles and into his knotted calves. The wind of a thousand idling turbines roared around him, kicking up dust-devils that frolicked all along the length of the landing field.

He approached a knot of men silhouetted against the dirty, blood-red dawn, unrecognisable through the airborne detritus until he was less than a pace away.

One of the men turned to him and held out a hand in greeting.

'Vossman Trae,' he introduced himself. Corgan accepted the proffered hand with suspicion. His opinion of the Navy was at a low ebb while Wheln was still recovering in the medical bay.

'You'll be covering our assault landing,' Corgan stated, continuing on towards his transport with the Wing Commander falling into step alongside.

'Yes, sir. You'll have two wings of Thunderbolts keeping your birds safe at any one time; one flying escort, one on cover. The other wing will be on call to replace depleted wings or to reinforce in general. As soon as you're on the ground we'll return here to rearm and refuel. After that we'll be available to you on demand.'

'Understood, Commander.' Corgan stopped, turning on his heel to face the Navy man. 'I hope I'm not going to be disappointed in our working arrangements!'

'I serve the Imperium of Man, Major. I have no personal agenda.' He'd obviously heard about Wheln. Corgan was a good judge of character and decided that for now he could trust Trae not to stint in that service. Perhaps he could even find a use for a trusted contact within the Navy. Time would tell.

He held out his hand again and Trae gripped it stolidly.

'Good luck, Major!'

'And to you, flyboy!'

xxx

They had trained for this.

From the manufactories of a grateful Fered Roathi IV, Commissar-General Draven had acquired much of the specialist equipment used by the new Orrax outfit. Their advanced carapace armour, complete with crash-suits capable to stemming minor injuries and introducing anaesthesia and stimulants to keep a soldier fighting had previously only been issued to the elite Roathan Guard, the Senator General's personal bodyguard.

Their weapons were also made in the Roathan pattern, short-bodied, snub-nosed hellguns, compact meltaguns and advanced plasma weaponry that were, on average, 82 percent reliable.

Their helmets had rudimentary tactical cogitators that displayed pertinent information onto the inside of their black-tinted visors, ammo-count, barrel temperature, heart-rate, objective sprites and the estimated relative distance, where appropriate.

In addition to this every day essential kit, the Roathan government had made a gift to them of a new prototype grav-chute. Compact and comparatively light-weight, these could be integrated into a trooper's armour, displacing the hellgun power-pack slightly, but allowing them to make high-altitude combat drops into hostile warzones.

They had trained for this en route to Gunga IV, but this was to be their first hazard-drop.

Arines was terrified.

Shopal slapped him on the back, positively gushing with excitement. His good humour was a tonic for the rest of the squad, cramped into the interior of their Valkyrie gunship, but it didn't touch Arines. The fear nestled in his guts like a malignant cancerous polyp.

He'd handed the hook device over to Shopal already, his hands shaking.

'You know how to operate this thing?' he'd asked. Shopal nodded, understanding immediately. As a former squad leader he'd been trained in how to use the hook. It was relatively easy, just the well-timed touch of a button, followed by an equally well-timed touch before they made pay-dirt. But Arines knew he'd be too damn scared to remember.

He sat back as Shopal shouted his way through the final briefing.

'Lights go out! Switch on your set! Check your readout! Green you go! Red you stay! I'll do the rest!'

The men nodded, each lost in his own thoughts. What if the light goes green but the set fails? What if I get sucked into a Valkyrie turbine on the way down? What if the hook malfunctions? Who's gonna claim my stuff? What if I never see my kids again?

But they'd asked most of these questions before and the answer was always the same. Nothing in war is certain except that some will die, if not all!

The chronometer ticked away. Shopal bellowed out a few bawdy jokes, easing the men's tension a little, making the time tick faster for some.

But not for Arines.

He sat frozen. His limbs were like wood, his tongue dry and lumpen in his throat. His guts churned and ached worse than the time he'd contracted dysentery in the fighting back on Selucia Secundum. He just wanted to put his feet on solid ground again. It didn't matter if he had to face down the entire Tyranid race to do so, he'd be happier than he was in that long, drawn out time between take-off and…

The jump…

Tumbling, stomach flopping inside him with the acceleration, he fought to straighten out as he'd been shown. But his arms and legs wouldn't co-ordinate. He kicked and lashed at the air, fighting for purchase, for balance.

The hook kicked in, igniting attitude thrusters to kick him towards Shopal. Arines was barely aware of the man until he felt his left ankle gripped. Another man appeared before him, holding out hands to clasp Arines' own. Together, Shopal and Bors dragged Arines into a controlled descent, steadying him, allowing him to witness with his whole being the vastness of the jungle-scape below, expanding as he plummeted.

His mind had been numb before, but now his entire consciousness rebelled. He dry-heaved with fright, drooling sticky, vile tasting bile into his rebreather mask. His arms started to windmill again and Bors was forced to give him a sharp rap on the helmet to bring him back to his senses.

It felt like he was losing his mind.

xxx

The hook device projected an altitude readout onto the inside of Shopal's visor. It also provided the wind-direction and speed, but the adjustments it made were automatic as it kept the squad on course for the drop zone. It allowed Shopal a measure of freedom, enough to get a good look at the hive mother-ship and the surrounding terrain.

It was vast. Even in its half-smashed state the sheer ossified bulk of the thing was beyond understanding. The surface was scorched and blackened by re-entry burnoff, seeming alive with crawling ants from this altitude.

The ground for miles behind it was ploughed up, a wound in the surface of the planet that may never be allowed to heal, that had been infected with a cancer that must be burned away. The jungle surrounding the malignancy was bloated and rotten, fit to burst, spewing a trillion spores that would metastatize the infection, spreading it across the surface of the verdant world. Gunga IV would sicken at first, the illness accelerating exponentially until the cancer killed every living organism, reducing it to a stinking, primordial soup.

In the millennia to come, if the soup was not harvested by the space-grazing Tyranid fleets, perhaps life might evolve once again on Gunga IV, growing out of the ooze to exist in whatever twisted form best allowed it to subsist in the hostile environment it was sure to be reduced to. Perhaps some small vestment of the men of Orrax would rise again from the ashes of their failure.

But first they would fight. They would not go down without a fight!

xxx

The ground rose up to meet him. The hook kicked in again, pivoting the squad around centres of gravity at about a thousand feet. Then the grav fields kicked in. Arines squad was fortunate, all the sets fired. Almost a score of the massed Orrax air-drop continued to plummet, screams lost in the wind of their passage, to impact like miniature explosions on the hard-packed, nutrient stripped plateaux.

The descent slowed, painfully. He was cosseted from the pressure differential by his suit, but the lurching deceleration still caused muscles to cramp and the turbulence rattled his teeth in his head.

Thirty seconds later the field intensified, the ground approaching terrifyingly fast. At five hundred feet he felt like his was wrapped in a blanket.

At four hundred the blanket had constricted around him.

At three hundred it was almost suffocating, his lungs unable to fill, but at least the fall seemed slower.

At two hundred feet Arines felt as though he was under a mile of water, but the ground was tantalisingly close.

A hundred feet to go and even though he could barely breath he forced himself to consider his landing, bracing himself for the impact, ensuring that his knees were loose and slightly bent. The forest canopy was almost level with his relative altitude, a far more inviting carpet than the pitted, uneven and undeniably hard plateaux.

The field released him. The drop to the ground was no worse than leaping from a high wall. Even so, Arines missed his footing and dropped into a roll. Another soldier landed on top of him and they floundered in a tangle of limbs.

He came to his feet. Two metres away there was a red smear. One of the unfortunates, having suffered the fate Arines had been so terrified of. He felt no pity, only relief.

Then the deployment orders started to filter into his helmet and he fought for his wits. Battle was joined.

xxx

Wing Commander Vossman Trae watched as the Orrax regiment deployed. They were running even as they hit the ground, forming fire-teams and expanding out to allow more men to drop into open ground behind them. Wave after wave of white-armoured humanity landed, formed up, moved outward to form a barrier, and were replaced by the following company.

It was a joy to watch… until the Tyranids formulated their reaction.

The hive ship was less than a kilometre from them. The manifold orifices in its scorched hide clogged with alien bodies as they surged out into the open air. Many were still coated in amniotic goo, newborn Gaunts and Warriors hatched from the birthing pods in which they had incubated. They joined the battle-scarred remnants of the forces that had reached out from the mother-ship in their first failed attempt to overwhelm the Imperial resistance and as one the host cascaded across the plateaux towards the Orrax lines.

Ball lightning arced out, striking in the midst of the Imperial soldiers, originating from the psychic bio-forms that had obviously been too few to risk sending with the first wave. Now they were required to fight, and they did so from afar.

Trae was about to issue orders to his wingmen to place their incendiary bombs in a strategic pattern when lieutenant Bosk keyed the vox.

'Commander, I've got bogeys, lifting off at three fifty two degrees.'

'Identify!'

'Looks like gargoyles, maybe a few larger breeds.'

'Copy, number two. All friendlies, be advised, 'nids on the wing. Keep your eyes peeled and be ready for evasive tactics. There's no way they can catch us but they will get in our way. Believe me, you do not want to catch one of those things in your intakes.'

A round of ayes came back and he issued his orders. The wing broke three ways, laying down a carpet of fire that thinned the tide of xenos flesh that could close on the Orrax. The chemical sludge would burn for hours, forming a wall of fire that only the hardiest Tyranids could broach.

Trae pulled up out of his dive, the G's distorting his patrician features. He armed his autocannons. It was time to deal out a little punishment.

xxx

Choker flicked his eyes over the chron. The Tyranid's pre-emptive assault was right on cue! The Catachan Third had led the march through the night, advancing headlong through the jungle, closing with the hive ship. The Orrax Sentinels had been charged with clearing jungle foliage so that the Pardus armour could move up behind the Vandians. It was exhausting work even in the cab of a sentinel and they were vulnerable throughout to spook attacks.

The Catachans did what they could to secure the perimeter, but some inevitably got through.

With the sun barely over the horizon, the Tyranid reaction to this reckless advance fell upon them and the diversion was declared a success. Choker could only hope that it was enough.

xxx

On the bridge of the Divine Fury, Captain Vittorio Nassus watched a stream of numbers gradually filling the green-glowing screen of the tac-logis readout. During the centuries of his captaincy, seated in the command chair of the Space Marine Battle Barge, he had come to understand the binary language of the machine spirit inhabiting the machine. Of course, it also helped that he had once trained under an old Techmarine mentor, with a view to becoming initiated into the machine cult.

Events had overtaken those ambitions. The War of Varda Perpendiculum had seen him elevated to the rank of sergeant and he had realised his potential lay elsewhere. Three campaigns later he had been promoted to Captain and transferred to command the Frigate, Carnivale Mort. Another twenty years and he'd been reassigned to the Fury. Two hundred years he had sat in that throne, leading up to this moment.

So very little could impress Vittorio Nassus. He'd seen it all. Nevertheless, what the machine was telling him caused him to raise an eye-brow in grudging respect. He requested an open line to Ascertes.

'Master, the plan unfolds according to plan and ahead of schedule. These penal troops are most efficient. I estimate that we can execute deployment within fifteen minutes, Terran standard.'

Young Ascertes thanked him for the report and signed off. The Extartes Second Company was moving hastily into position to support the Imperial Guard fighting in the jungle. The density of the ground cover was slowing them down more than anticipated, according to the data. If they weren't careful, the Imperial Guard would end up reaping all the glory this day.

Nassus opened a new line on the comms board, this one connecting him to the translocation deck.

'Captain Ursos, are your men prepared?'

The commander of the First Company was a taciturn veteran of three score campaigns. His reply was curt, with a trace of annoyance.

'My men are champing at the bit, Captain Nassus. When do we deploy?'

'Why, imminently, my old friend, and ahead of time. I'm transmitting the relevant hex codes to the Tech-Magus now. May the Emperor speed you on your way…'

xxx

Corgan checked his chron.

'Where the hell are the Catachans. They were supposed to be here half an hour ago.'

The Tyranid defenders had been thinned out according to the plan. The forced march of the Vandians and Pardus regiments had drawn away the larger part of the enemy swarm. The majority of what the Orrax had to deal with were newborns and those too badly damaged by previous engagements to keep up with the rest. It made for a slightly easier morning than he'd been expecting, if he was honest. Resistance was still stiff, but the Orrax were holding their own.

What worried him was that the van of the enemy force lay somewhere behind them, blocking their line of retreat. An airlift was too risky, the Valkyries would be vulnerable to gargoyles and winged Tyranid warriors. They were leaving on foot whether they liked it or not. It was important, therefore, that they had the help and expertise of their jungle-loving compatriots in arms.

'I don't know where they are,' Arines replied, 'But if they don't get here soon, I'll be going back to Orrax on assault and battery charges…'

'Haven't you heard, Cap?' Shopal cut in, grinning. 'All you get for sort of behaviour these day is busted down a stripe or two!'

'Yeah, you should know, laughing boy. Get back to work!'

He turned back to Corgan.

'You want me to send a man out to see what's keeping 'em?'

No,' Corgan shook his head. 'It'd be suicide. We'll just take our chances. We've still got Deacon…'

'Right!' Arines replied, his voice heavy with hidden meaning.

'He's okay, Ben. I'll trust him that far, at least.'

xxx

The last time Darron had witnessed the arrival of Astartes in full Terminator plate, it had been as they marched down the exit ramp of a Thunderhawk Gunship, flying the colours of the shadowy Ordo Malleus. They had been impressive enough. He'd fought alongside them, they were like a landslide, boulders tumbling relentlessly downhill, crushing anything that got in their way. Just how you imagined the Space Marines to be when you were a kid…

As the air started to crackle with static electricity, the stink of ozone assaulting his senses, he turned to observe the cleared area the Orrax had formed their perimeter around. He had to cover his eyes with his hand when reality split with the flare of a supernova. Lights danced before his eyes and he blinked them away.

Where before there had been an empty expanse of broken terrain, now there stood rank upon rank of hulking Space Marine Terminators. The briefing had stated there would be around eighty of them. Many of his fellows had snorted at the figure, thinking it would be like throwing spit-wads at the hive ship. Darron knew better. Five Grey Knights had been a near unstoppable force back on Fered Roathi. Eighty must be somewhere near as good as ten regiments of Imperial Guard levies.

The sight was certainly humbling.

They started to move, lumbering steadily towards the massive bulk of the hive ship. They were entirely silent, enclosed within adamantine shells, their communications conducted entirely by vox-bead. Watching their advance was like witnessing a tsunami, an unstoppable wave of heavily armoured, heavily armed warriors, each of whom must have decades, centuries of experience in the most hazardous theatres of war known to mankind.

He turned back to his men. Some had turned to see what was happening, but the Tyranids were pressing close and there wasn't time for them to appreciate the significance of their arrival.

If the Tyranids thought they had been punished at Gurshun, they were about to learn the true meaning of the word.

Corgan's voice rang out over the bead.

'All units, prepare to fall back. The Marines'll take things from here.'

Some of the men muttered. They'd found the going easier than expected. They were keen to keep fighting, to support the Astartes advance. They had become so inured to the horror of their enemy and so vengeful after their losses at Gurshun that their keen survival instincts were yet to kick in.

Most of them didn't realise that if they were inside ten kilometres of the hive when the Marauders arrived, they'd likely be caught in the flash-fire explosion and killed.

Darron wasn't about to let them have their way.

xxx

The remnants of Bellicus Company under Lieutenant Deacon led the way out, backed up by Arines with Cerberus Company. The going was fairly quick, the jungle having been trampled over twice already by advancing Tyranids. They made good time.

Argo Company took the rear-guard, but the Tyranids at the hive were more concerned with the Marines so they got away pretty much clean. After a half hour's trek, they came across a Catachan scouting platoon.

Corgan moved up to the front, a number of curt questions forming in his mind. They all melted away when he saw who was leading the platoon.

Wolfe stood at the head of his fifteen strong unit, brazen as the day he was born. Deacon squared up to him, looking like he was seeing a ghost. From the looks of things, the two had already exchanged heated words.

Arines sidled up to Corgan before he could intervene.

'He must have made it clear at Gourangi, hooked up with the Third and laid low.'

'The question is,' Corgan replied, 'Why come out of hiding now?'

Arines shrugged.

'It's okay, Ben, I already know the answer. He's been after my blood since I was nineteen, too much of a coward to try and claim it himself but not because he doesn't think he can beat me. The vendetta gives him a purpose. When I'm gone, he goes back to being nothing. But it looks like things have changed now that he's back with his own.'

'What are you gonna do?'

Corgan grinned, then gasped with pain as the tender wound on his cheek twisted.

'I'll reason with him, it's the last thing he'll expect!'

He stepped forward, emerging from the lines of Arines' men to stand slightly behind Deacon.

'Stand down lieutenant.' The white armoured Catachan stepped away without taking his eyes of Wolfe.

Corgan endured Wolfe's hateful stare stoically.

'Welcome back, Captain. What happened to your uniform?'

Wolfe spat, but didn't reply.

'Your company's missed you. Deacon's been doing a fine job filling your shoes while you were away.'

'The men you sent into Gourangi to die, you mean?'

'War's like that, Captain. But it can't have been so bad, you're still alive aren't you? Barely even a scratch on you despite the report I heard that you were trampled under a wave of Tyranids.'

'You never came back to recover the bodies so how could you substantiate that report?'

'And how would you know we never went back, Captain? You were sharing rations with your countrymen several miles to the north. You can't prove a thing. I, on the other hand, have a hundred witnesses to your desertion…'

'One of whom is a Commissar!'

Vaughn stalked into view, a bolt pistol clutched in his white-knuckled grip. He'd heard of the Catachan reputation. Commissars had a short life-expectancy in such outfits. He was taking his life in his hands by pulling a gun. Wolfe didn't even flinch and nor did any of his men. He just hawked and spat again, his eyes never leaving Corgan's.

'Call your bloodhound off, Major. We both know what this is all about.'

'Stand down, Commissar,' said Corgan. Vaughn looked at him with steel in his features.

'I am an agent of Imperial Justice, Major. You have no authority to order me to stand down…'

'Then don't take it as an order, take it as a recommendation. It's a good one, believe me.'

Vaughn cast his observant eyes around. The Catachans looked at their ease, but then these men were Deathworlders born and raised. They were always ready to kill in defence of their own. The Commissar lowered his pistol and backed away to stand next to Deacon, who was inexplicably removing his carapace armour.

'How's this going to be then?' Corgan asked, mildly. 'You want to die like Roarke did?'

A murmur of discontent rippled through the Catachans. Wolfe snarled.

'And how was that, a lasbolt in the back?'

'Actually, he insisted on doing me with the knife I'd put through his hand a couple of days before. All I had to defend myself was the knife I'd taken from him.'

'You're lying, you never could have beaten him blade to blade…'

'Why don't you try me?'

'NO!'

Both men turned in surprise. Deacon had stepped forward once more, stripped down to slacks and vest, carrying his massive, mercury-filly machete in one meaty fist.

'It was Jamma made you what you are, sarge.' Said Deacon. 'If anyone's going to unmake what he did to us then it's got to be one of Jamma's boys. And we're all that's left. This thing ends today, Wolfe!'


	19. Vendetta's End

**A/N - changed the name of the previous chapter as it seemed to suit this one better, sorry for any confusion this may cause. Enjoy the final installment of BtDYK Part 2!**

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The Orrax troopers stood in tense, close-packed ranks, forming a wide semicircle almost surrounding the far smaller Catachan outfit. Deacon squared up to Wolfe at the centre with Corgan and Vaughn off to one side. The Catachans were murmuring amongst themselves, aghast at what they saw to be brothers turning on one another. Corgan was just confused.

'I can take you both,' Wolfe declared.

The Catachans became even more agitated. Corgan shook his head, trying to make sense of what was happening. He knew he'd won Deacon over to his camp, but not in such a way as to engender loyalty like this. Biggs explained to him later the dynamics of Deacon's relationship with Wolfe.

There was no love between them. Deacon's loyalty to his own was born on Catachan, where the act of turning upon your brother was bound to have the direst of consequences. That loyalty had been eroded throughout the term of their exile. Jamma had perpetrated the decline, leading them to desert the Imperial Guard, abandoning their brothers. Wolfe had been the worst affected by what they'd done, but his upbringing prevented him from venting his anger and bitterness on their leader.

Instead, he'd transferred that bitterness onto Corgan himself after the events that had brought about Jamma's death and their internment on Orrax. Since then Deacon had watched him send men to die in doomed attempts at revenge, knowing all along that Wolfe was afraid to bring about Corgan's death. Where else would he find another outlet for his building frustration?

Deacon had been straining at the end of his tether, fighting to see the right in what they were doing and failing. Wolfe had let them down as surely as Jamma had. It was time to set things straight. He'd finally found the strength he needed to break the bonds holding him back.

Corgan stepped forward, resting a placatory hand on Deacon's massive shoulder.

'We don't have time for this, fellas. In case you hadn't noticed, we're in kind of a hurry…'

'Catachan justice won't wait, Major,' came a new voice. From the murky green depths of the jungle came a second platoon of green-camoed soldiers, slightly larger than the first. The man that had spoken approached Corgan and proffered a meaty hand in greeting.

'Hrothgar Hammer, Captain of the Twelfth Company Fire Starters, Catachan Third. I'm here to escort your boys out of here!'

Corgan shook his hand. This was the man that was supposed to have met them at the translocation point. From the looks of his unit they'd been fighting hard to break through. With the pleasantries done with, Hammer turned to Deacon, a glimmer of sad recognition in his eyes. Unspoken questions passed between them and went unanswered.

'This bears little resemblance to the kind of Catachan justice I remember.' He grumbled. 'But then you boys have been gone a long time. I guess you've forgotten most of your deathworld etiquette. On Catachan, disputes within the kithvan were resolved in the simplest way possible.'

A murmur of agreement rippled through the Deathworlders. They came to some kind of accord that went so far over Corgan's head he almost missed it completely. One of them spoke, uttered the words they were all thinking for the benefit of the soft-worlders.

'Let the jungle decide!'

xxx

Vossman Trae picked off another Carnifex with his autocannon, chewing up ground and puncturing the creature's thorax, slamming back into his seat as he pulled up and away. The Terminator armoured Astartes below him ploughed on, abandoning the corpses of two of their brothers. As long as the transponders in the suits were still intact the bodies of the fallen could be teleported back to the Battle Barge, otherwise the loss of those suits of armour would cost them dear.

Things were progressing reasonably to plan, so far. The Tyranids were nothing if not predictable, but under the circumstances he understood why. If the hive ship was lost then the world could be saved, the Tyranids would no long be able to procreate. The disease they had infected the jungle with could be isolated and eliminated. They hadn't done enough yet to tip the balance.

And yet still two of his wingmen were dead.

One of them had mistimed a manoeuvre and slammed into the body of the hive. It was a stupid, rookie mistake. Selwyn had flown several void missions under Trae's wing. He'd been good, an instinctive void-pilot. He just hadn't quite got the knack of atmospheric combat manoeuvres. Such a waste.

Eydvald, on the other hand, had been mobbed by winged Tyranids. He'd been coming out of a strafing run when they'd flocked unexpectedly, rising up like a curtain across his escape vector. The xenos had dragged him from the firmament at great cost to both sides. The shattered wreck was still burning.

Trae would feel their loss keenly, but later. For now, there was work to be done. The Marauder Bombers would soon be en route with their deadly payload. The Astartes didn't have long to place their charges.

xxx

Ascertes Greathammer was like a whirlwind on the battlefield. His massive brazen hammer smote his enemies all around him, pulverising Tyranids in clouds of blood-mist, sending chitinous shrapnel flying in lethal kinetic explosions.

His personal bodyguard worked around him, filling the gaps in his armour, as any good bodyguard should. Their chainswords bit deep, adding to the lingering cloud of vaporised ichors, littering the jungle with corpses. Perseus, the Chaplain, spurred them on.

The Astartes were late to the field of combat, but they were making up for that now, coming in on the Tyranid flank. Initially they crushed all before them, advancing deep into the Tyranid force until the larger bioforms turned on them. These managed to slow their advance and reap casualties of their own, but the resulting crossfire from the Imperial Guardsmen was lethal.

The front line Guardsmen had fallen back to their slower moving armour, forming a solid fighting line for what was essentially a short-range firefight. The Pardus ordnance was ploughing the jungle up in great fountains of loamy earth, mingled with broken alien flesh. The Catachan Hellhounds were bringing fire down on their heads. Heavy weapons teams guarded the flanks, eviscerating anything larger than a warrior that managed to get close and letting the infantry do the rest.

Working together, these two arms of the Imperium closed around the Tyranid counter-attack in a vice-like grip. They took their losses, but the Tyranids were fighting a battle on two fronts and even their alien determination couldn't stand up to the kind of punishment they were taking.

Their withdrawal was sudden. Ascertes let his hammer fall to his side as the Tyranids before him melted away, turning tail and fleeing. He knew this was unusual behaviour, especially when there were still synapse creatures alive to relay the hive-mind's imperatives. But then he also knew that this was no cowardly retreat in the face of overwhelming odds. The swarm must have received the signal that indicated their hive was under attack. They were rushing home to defend it.

The Chapter Master of the Extartes gripped his hammer below the head and raised it high over his head.

'For the Emperor!' he cried and was echoed by a hundred of his battle brothers. The Guardsmen took up the victory cry. Some of them rushed forward in pursuit of their foe but their commanding officers reeled them in. They knew what was coming.

Ascertes signalled the withdrawal.

xxx

Corgan hunkered down in the undergrowth in response to Captain Hammer's signal. The jungle was writhing around them. Tyranids broke from cover by the swarm. He raised his rifle to fight, his heart in his mouth and his stomach cold. But Hammer held out a hand to stay him.

'Watch…' he said. 'They see us but it's not us they want. The hive needs them and we are not the immediate threat. They will pass us by.'

Corgan watched with naked awe as the tide of alien flesh ebbed and flowed around them, bypassing them with little more than a warning hiss.

'Come,' said the Catachan. 'We still have some way to go before we are out of danger.'

xxx

Deacon and Wolfe fought like Catachan Devils, fast and furious, each with a deadly sting, their faces curled into rictus masks of hatred. Wolfe's sword was lighter than Deacon's and he was faster, but Deacon was a master swordsman. Both men had been tempered on a thousand battlefields. Both had survived the rigours of Catachan, the Necromundan Underhive and the ice mines of Orrax, deadly environments that only the strongest could endure. The scales were evenly balanced.

Deacon was nude from the waist up, his powerful torso slicked with sweat that diluted the blood trickling from several minor scratches his former brother in arms had inflicted. Sweat matted his short-cropped hair, running down into his eyes. But you learned to live with that when you were born on Catachan. He built a shake of the head into the structure of his economical movements, flicking the sweat from his brow.

Wolfe was grimly silent. He didn't even grunt with exertion as he pressed home with his offensive swordplay. He didn't glorify in the sight of Deacon's blood because he knew he hadn't yet inflicted a telling wound on his opponent. He had Deacon on the defensive, as was to be expected from the older, more experienced man. But the other man's defences were formidable. His control over the mercury filled blade was consummate. Wherever Wolfe put his sword it came up against a steel barrier.

The sound of metal upon metal absorbed into the dense jungle. Deacon's grunting barely registered over the thrumming sounds of life. But as the dance dragged on and both men began to tire, the sounds of life faded to nothing and were replaced by a much different reverberation.

They knew that sound. It caused them to break off, their disputes forgotten, tuning into the frighteningly familiar vibration that rattled the leaf-mould at their feet and shook the trees by the roots. They were the telltale signs of a jungle-stampede! On Catachan it would be the native wild boar that caused this sound and they were bad enough. Here it could only mean one thing.

It had seemed a bitter joke to utter those ominous words: Let the jungle decide! To the Deathworlders this place was as tame as the garden worlds of Ultramar. The only decisions here would be made at the edge of a sword. But now it seemed that the jungle was indeed taking an interest. The quaking of the trees, the vibrations of the earth, these things held meaning for a man of Catachan. It was the sound of judgement made manifest. The verdict had been passed upon those cast out.

Xenomorphs broke from cover, smaller forms before the larger as they struggling to keep up with their diminutive cousins. Gaunts and Genestealers swirled around them, heedless, ignoring them. Their instincts kicked in and they lashed out, taking Tyranids down as they fled past the two men. Then they found themselves in the path of a lumbering screamer-killer, its fore-swept talons flailing. It came upon them so quickly it took them by surprise.

Deacon felt himself shoved roughly aside. He rolled in the crushed undergrowth, trampled by straggling Gaunts and becoming coated in vine-sap and jungle detritus. He stayed down, curling himself into a ball, making himself as small as he possibly could as the stampede raged around him.

He didn't see what it was that knocked him unconscious.

xxx

Ursos sneered in disgust as he laid eyes upon the honeycombed cells that formed the ceiling of the birthing chamber. The massive construct receded into the fluorescent gloom, vast and vile and monstrous. Most of the cells were empty, their silken canopies prematurely burst as the malformed xenos crawled forth to defend the hive. The floor of the chamber was littered with tattered silk and slick with amniotic fluid.

Many of the cells were still sealed, their hideous contents twitching as the Terminators' high-intensity torches dissected the gloom. The Astartes ignored these, time did not allow them to purge every living organism in this place, they would achieve that goal soon enough.

Ursos led the way, coming near to a clutch of cells in which hungry grubs scraped rhythmically at their narrow cylinders, demanding food. These he shot dead out of a sense of caution, spilling maggot innards across the canted floor.

His men moved up behind him, one of them carrying the huge incendiary device across his back. The others covered him, watchful for the soldiers of the hive. But the swarm, such as it was, held back. They hissed in rage as their young were slain, but the invaders could do so much more damage and for the time being, the loss of a few grubs was deemed negligible.

There would be a turning point. Ursos knew this. The moment would come when their presence could no longer be tolerated, when the vast intellect that ruled this place would be willing to make the necessary sacrifices to purge the hive. He was ready for that turning point. He would sell his life dear to ensure the completion of his objective. And that was the only thing that mattered.

They reached the waypoint.

The squad formed a bastion around Brother Cantrell as he lowered himself to his knees. Brother Latros uncoupled the device from its harness on Cantrell's back. The Techmarine initiate, Valian, began the incantations of awakening, drawing hexes in the air over the device and running nimble fingers over the control panel set into the metallic shell.

The device awoke. It spoke in binary form, confirming the programme laid into its memory chip. A powerful void shield shimmered into existence around it. Valian nodded his affirmation.

'It is done!' he intoned.

'Very well,' Ursos replied. 'Let us leave this place.'

The moment they moved away from the device was the turning point. Brother Turgon's heavy flamer gurgled to life. Salvanti's assault cannon chattered into motion, propellant flaring as he opened up with a fury. The chittering hordes, given lease to do what came naturally to them, closed on them in a solid mass, numbering many more than they had thought.

The Terminators didn't stop moving, they fought their way steadily, unstoppably towards the outer shell of the hive ship. The horde crashed against them like waves against a mighty atoll. They carved their way through with their guns, their power gauntlets and chainfists.

Ursos laid about him with his lightning claws charged to full capacity. He pushed his tactical dreadnought armour forward, increasing his momentum into what passed for a run. He cleaved the swarm in two, tearing through the tide of living abomination like the prow of a mighty warship parts the void. His squad followed in his wake, adding their weight to his advance.

When they reached the outer hull the squad formed up around Ursos and he went to work, slicing great chunks of igneous chitin from the outer crust with his powered claws. It seemed to take forever.

Meanwhile, Salvanti's rate of fire faltered and failed as a gout of powerful bio-acid melted through the chinks in his armour. Incapacitated, the rest of the squad stepped up their efforts, pushing themselves to the very limits of an Astartes' prodigious endurance. They were titans amongst men, the living embodiment of the Emperor's wrath. They were as invulnerable as any man could be, and yet not invulnerable.

Cantrell lost his footing, barged from his fighting stance by the weight of his aggressors. Turgon tried to reach him as they started to drag him away and almost lost his own life in the process. Cantrell was folded into the morass, never to be seen again.

It took Ursos seven minutes to hack his way through to the outside, creating a hole in the upper surface of the hive ship. He waved the squad through, Latros and the Valian supporting Salvanti's unconscious bulk between them. Ursos was the last to make his exit, barely managing to keep the Tyranids at bay with all the accumulated experience of his centuries of close-quarters fighting.

The squad turned to cover the exit, destroying anything that emerged from the hole and spraying gore across the charred surface of the hive ship.

'Nassus, this is Ursos. Our charge is set!'

'Acknowledged, Captain, the other teams have been retrieved already, prepare for translocation!'

'Understood!'

Seconds later the warp swallowed them whole to belch them out again on the teleportation deck of the Fury. Their work done, they placed themselves in the Emperor's hands.

xxx

Fleet Captain Tarkon drifted. The infection in his veins had spread throughout the narrow corridors of his metal body. The void was in his belly and it was cold, so cold.

He slumped in his throne of wood and steel, crippled, a cadaver waiting for the cold sleep of death. He slouched and drooled and watched in dumb reverence as the hive ship convulsed. Explosions blossomed along her flanks. Massive constructs of flesh and bone slumped and broke apart. Polyps of gelatinous material belched out into the frozen emptiness of space.

Smaller vessels swarmed around the foe, punishing it, fanning the flames that boiled within. Fleet Captain Tarkon watched the death of the hive ship through machine eyes, witnessed the cataclysmic explosion caused by a critical torpedo strike from the Cobra Destroyer, Eagle's Wing. He rejoiced within himself, his fleshy self virtually comatose, as the bloated abomination burst apart and immolated from within.

Victory then, but at what cost? Tarkon mourned. Not for himself or even the Justice of Terra. The ship would be recovered and refitted, no doubt. No. He mourned for the crew. He felt their deaths, every one, through the hypersensitive organs of his metallic body. He saw Lieutenant Brady's lying prone in a corridor awash with blood and alien ichors, his heart fluttering but still beating. He felt his cooling systems bleeding out, billowing through the engineering section, enveloping brave sergeant Holst whose exploits had saved the Justice from total immolation. He agonised as the bridge crew suffocated, their life support systems failing.

Within his sealed sarcophagus, the fleshy cadaver that was Tarkon's own body was sheltered from the depredations of the void. He longed to join them in death.

But Fleet Captain Tarkon drifted. His engines deactivated as the failsafe kicked in, a precaution triggered by the loss of seventy five percent of life support systems throughout the ship. His body cooled, hollow corridors booming with the sound of his metal skin contracting. One by one the lights that glittered like yellow stars along his flanks were extinguished and went out, like the snuffing of a thousand candles.

Eventually Fleet Captain Tarkon drifted into the next life. A hero. A martyr.

xxx

Lieutenant Brady was Warrant Officer aboard the Justice of Terra, responsible for internal security. He was a father of two and a loving husband to a beautiful wife. He had graduated from the Naval Academy of Bakka with first class honours. He lay on his back in a pool of blood, most of it his own.

His hand held up a crumpled photopict. The face of his beautiful wife was smeared with a red thumbprint. His two babies stared happily out of the picture, proud of their papa. Soon they would know of his failure. All that effort in vain. He hoped the navy would make the effort to lie about the manner of his demise. He hoped they would send his medals home to Anise and the girls with a letter that lauded him as a hero of the Imperium.

He'd known the risks, of course. And he'd done all that he could to stop the aliens from overrunning the ship. He'd stemmed the tide for a while, along with his hard fighting security forces and with a few ancient servitors along for the ride. But he'd known that it could come to this. He'd known, but he'd been foolish enough to hope… Hope that he would see his family again. That was not going to happen now, not with his lungs so full of blood and his rib cage torn open.

The corridor was blurring around him. The photopict was the last thing in his world to lose clarity.

xxx

Sergeant Holst fought the pain, fought the spreading numbness as it worked its way up into his torso. He sat with his back to the frigid shielding that protected him from the radiation of the massive plasma reactor. The cowling was over three metres thick, solid steel with adamantium supports. Massive cooling systems ran their serpentine limbs across the face of the cowling, penetrating it at intervals, injecting the plasma-core's jacket with super-cool chemicals and preserving what life remained in the Justice of Terra.

One of those snakes had ruptured. The breach had saved Holst's life and soon it would take it away. The jet of coolant had killed the last survivors of his platoon along with the brood of vicious gaunts that had threatened to overwhelm them. It had also turned Holst's legs to ice from the hips down.

He could barely feel it. That must be the shock. He knew with great clarity that if he moved, his legs would stay exactly where they were. They might even explode into a thousand red fragments.

But the core was safe. The Justice of Terra would survive even if her crew did not. Holst had brought this about.

He reached for his shotgun, cradled it in his arms, and waited. He would wait until the shock killed him, or the coolant filled the compartment and suffocated him, or perhaps it would freeze him dry, preserved until the slightest jolt caused him to collapse into a pile of red ice. He would wait until the rescue parties turned up and then he would say goodbye to his legs, perhaps also to his life.

xxx

As he came back to his senses Deacon realised that the stampede left him virtually unscathed. His ribs were bruises and his skin abraded, but he was essentially still in one piece. He struggled to his feet, still dazed by the scale of his experience.

Wolfe lay a short distance away, on his back, his torso crushed, blood seeping from his mouth and nose. He was still breathing, shallow, painfully, spitting bright blood. His eyes were open to the sky, revealed through a gap in the canopy. Deacon dropped to his knees beside him, took his hand in his own.

At the last, Wolfe had saved his life. It had cost him his own. Deacon had no words.

'Looks like home, doesn't it?' Wolfe's voice was ragged, barely above a whisper.

Deacon looked up. It looked nothing like Catachan. This jungle was tame. And yet it had still rendered justice just as Catachan would. Deacon nodded, tears springing to his eyes.

'Just like home, brother. Just like home.'

Wolfe's eyes glazed over. The life went out of him. All that hatred, all that self-destructive frustration lost into the ether.

Deacon hoisted the broken husk of his fellow Catachan over his shoulders. Putting his unerring sense of direction in charge he and trudged in the direction of Gurshun.

xxx

It was to be the last sortie of the day.

Lieutenant Commander Vossman Trae fired his burners in order to catch the tail end of the bomber wing. Epsilon Wing was already providing cover, but command wanted all their flyboys along for the ride. Everything was riding on this operation and the bombers were more vulnerable to winged bioforms.

He arrived in time to take command just as the hive ship loomed over the horizon, backlit by the flames that still raged around it, dark and malignant beneath a dark haze of smoke, ash and alien spores.

The bombers had been loaded with air bursting napalm bombs, designed to carpet the hive and the surrounding jungles, keeping billions of spores from bursting free. They would excise the greater part of the disease, giving them time and opportunity to prevent the spread of those spores that would inevitably escape.

It was likely that Gunga IV's ecosystem would never fully recover from the damage done by the invasion, but the Imperium would still be able to reap the resources the world had to offer.

'Angry Aces, this is Trae, we are on station. Keep us advised and we'll watch your backs, over!'

'Good to have you with us, Voss. The Emperor Protects!'

The target loomed larger, filling their field of vision. Specks of deeper blackness became visible in the haze, circling. The hive was waiting.

'Be advised, flight, looks like the airways are busy today. Let's fire up those burners and take the fight to the enemy!'

The Thunderbolts surged ahead of the Marauders, afterburners flaring bright in the fading light, leaving just three to fly top cover in case of surprises. Trae rocketed into unfriendly airspace, his autocannons spitting fire.

Winged warriors caught in his cone of fire dropped like rag-dolls, their wings and bodies ruptured. A brood of Gargoyles stooped down from his three, their small arms scoring his bird's armour but unable to penetrate. They were too slow to get in his way, organisms getting into his forward cone where they might be able to latch onto him or blow out his intakes presented the only real risk.

He ducked and dived, picking off the larger xenos and scattering the thicker flocks of Gargoyles. His wingman followed him through, taking warriors apart with pinpoint bursts of cannon fire. The carrion birds of the hive were scattered to the four winds as the Angry Aces lined up for their attack run.

'We're on our way in, Voss. Watch out below.'

'Acknowledged. Flight leader to flight, be advised; we have bombers inbound. Make sure you don't get caught in the fallout.' The Thunderbolts pulled out, gaining altitude, drawing some of the Tyranids with them as the Marauders started to drop their payload.

The larger part of the xenos flyers homed in on this new threat, mobbing the lead bomber in the hope that they would be able to peel the crew out of their tin-can. The bomber's hard points opened up, streams of stubber fire tearing into the flyers and picking them out of the skies. Very few got through and the small number of Navy Marines allocated to each bird quickly dispatched these.

A pair of winged Tyrants rose from the hive. They had avoided the aerial combat until now. They were too intelligent to pit themselves against the snub fighters but these lumbering birds were more like easy meat.

Trae spotted them first, calling his wingman in and executed a long dive, trying to judge the bomb-fall at the same time as lining up his guns. He switched over to the quadruple lascannon array for a bit more punch and opened up.

His first attempt missed, but his wingman was on target, taking one of the creature's limbs off. Trae's second burst tore through its left wing, sending it spiralling down in a writhing tangle.

The second Tyrant reached its intended target even as the bomber started to unleash hell. It wasn't even slowed by the stubber fire and proceeded to remove the forward canopy with its rending claws, spearing the pilot and co-pilot simultaneously with its primary limbs. The navigator fired his navy revolver at point-blank, punching a hole in the Tyrant's thorax, but it was too late. The bomber dropped its nose, curving away to port, payload scattering haphazardly. Half way down as it stuck its tail up in the air, the remaining bombs, jammed in their cradles. The detonation tore the bomber apart, sending fire and shrapnel cascading to the ground.

Meanwhile, the Thunderbolts flying cover had managed to break the victorious Tyrant apart. It followed its prey down into oblivion.

One bomber lost wasn't nearly enough to thin out the Imperial bombardment. The Tyranids were hopelessly outmatched. They hadn't had time to adapt to this aerial assault. Fliers they had aplenty, but they were dedicated to close-quarters fighting, only a few were armed with projectile weapons and these were woefully inadequate to the task set before them.

The firebombs blossomed at five hundred feet, spreading flaming propellant over a wide area. The hive ship itself was enveloped in broiling flames. The army that had returned to combat the Terminator assault was caught in the conflagration. They writhed with torment, limbs outstretched to the uncaring sky.

The bomber wing broke off, curving around in a broad turn to head back to base. Two were trailing smoke where flying Tyranids had managed to inflict damage. Another found it was unable to turn, more concerned with a brood of Gargoyles that had smashed their way inside, overwhelming the crew. The plane never returned to base. All they ever found was a charred out scar in the jungle where it had come to rest.

Trae and his remaining fighters took the rearguard, seeing off any of the swarm that tried to follow. They were the only ones to bear witness to the implosion of the hive.

The devices planted within were timed to perfection, detonating in sequence, vomiting a phosphoric chemical and igniting it. There were no massive explosions, such would only serve to spread the spores. Instead they were killed in the flames along with every other living thing within the hive. Half-formed grubs, metamorphosing Tyranid constructs, the Norn Queen herself ensconced at the heart of the massive organism, all were purified in the flames of Imperial retribution.

The charred dome of her hull cracked as the heat assaulted it from within. Hairline fractures limned in molten fire spread across the black expanse, barely visible through the hungry fires of the bombing.

Suddenly the highest point of the dome slumped inward, collapsing in upon itself as the honeycomb structures within lost their structural integrity. The collapse continued in spastic bursts, little by little, until the weight of the structures above could not be supported by those on the lower reaches and the whole bloated thing deflated in a cloud of soot and ash.

The battle for Gunga IV was won.

xxx

Corgan sat alone on a stretch of abandoned rockrete barricade, charred and stained by the rigours of battle just as Corgan's armour bore the scars of conflict. Just as he wore the scar upon his cheek.

He'd removed his helmet and rebreather mask. His weapons lay forgotten at his side. He was resigned to his exhaustion, his brain virtually dormant. He breathed. He lived. But at that moment he didn't have the capacity to do anything more.

His regiment was in billets. Most of them would be sleeping off the battle. A good many of them would be getting much needed medical attention. They would be recovering from this battle for a long time. The microscopic Tyranid organisms would have to be flushed from their bodies before they could take root. But they had been taking drugs to slow down the metabolism of those invasive alien spores so it could wait.

As Corgan waited now. He didn't know what for. He just instinctively knew that he was waiting for something.

It was dark when Deacon materialised out of the gloom with his heavy burden. He was pale and drawn, physically wrecked by his forced march. He dropped the sack of flesh and bone in front of Corgan, fixed him with empty eyes.

'It's finished!' he said, moving to sit next to his commanding officer on the barricade.

Corgan nodded inanely, looking down at Wolfe with emotions he didn't understand bubbling beneath the surface.

'What happens now?' Deacon asked.

Corgan looked up, staring out at the creaking, hissing jungle. He forced himself to think through his exhaustion, his numbness, the feeling of dislocation.

'Do you want to go back to your regiment?' he asked. 'I could fix that for you…'

Deacon shook his head slowly, straightening with something akin to pride in his tired out posture.

'No. This is my regiment, now. I don't belong anywhere else!'


End file.
